Priceline vs. Hotwire

We all love a good deal, and that is precisely what Priceline aimed to offer when it started its company in 1998. 

Now, the makers of Priceline were smart. They saw a market no one had tapped into: online travel booking. And they booked it to success. 

Priceline held the market for a number of years, even through the steep plummet from 2001-2009. Hotwire, a worthy competitor jumped in the running in 2000. 

Both companies offer relatively the same products--discount flights, hotels, and rental cars. 

However, each company has taken a unique approach at branding themselves, differentiating their products in, well, different ways. 

When you go to Priceline.com, you see William Shatner and Kaley Cuoco. Most customers are sure to recognize at least one of them--Shatner is well known for his role as Captain Kirk in StarTrek and has been the face of Priceline since its early beginnings. Cuoco is well known to Millennials from her role as Penny in the hit sitcom The Big Bang Theory. 

Priceline has created a whole story-line using these two characters. They've taken their customers beyond a simple online shopping experience, to shopping with the "Negotiator" and his newly revealed "secret" daughter. Purchasing a flight to San Fransisco suddenly becomes a humorous family affair. 

The website is fun, bright, easy to navigate, and follows the Negotiator's story all the way through to checkout. As a hotel search loads, Shatner appears in a silly "Negotiating" pose, promising to find the greatest hotel deals--and he usually does!

There is continuity and purpose in Priceline's marketing. They've created a brand presence that leaves targeted audiences unable to separate Captain Kirk and Penny from great online travel deals. 

Hotwire alternatively chooses to go a more professional route, creating a clean, straightforward approach for its customers. It does not have a clear brand presence besides the bright red dot in the logo. Honestly, it's not exciting or eye-catching. In fact, it's rather bland.  

Not only does the Hotwire home webpage have three "get the app" advertisements...on the same screen...

...it also slightly resembles a busy magazine advertisement page with cheesy photos of tourist attractions in different cities advertising its hotel deals. Displaying all the information necessary except the name of the hotels. 

What? Where are the hotel names you ask? Yes, that's right. Not there. One major differentiating factor between Priceline and Hotwire, is that when you book hotels through Hotwire, you don't know exactly what hotel you're booking with. That doesn't sit well with every customer, who will simply turn to another travel site that gives them the information they need. 

Perhaps this limited information offering is a marketing tactic for their customers to follow their Twitter banner quote:

While we're on the subject of social media, after minutes of scouring the Hotwire website (which is already a bad sign), there is no mention of links to their social media websites. However, they obviously do exist--as shown above. 

Whereas, Priceline has clear availability to their wide social media presence at the bottom of their homepage. 

In addition, Priceline's Twitter webpage follows their brand theme of blue accent colors and a banner photo of the "Negotiator" and his daughter.

It is also worth mentioning that Priceline has 4x the amount of followers as Hotwire. Priceline also tweets relative and interactive links and photos. For example, they play a continuous game of "Can  you guess where he's staying?"

Meanwhile, Hotwire fails to provide new content on their feed, instead, simply retweeting "praise tweets" from followers/customers. Which is not bad. But also not good enough. 

To me, Priceline seems like the clear winner in accomplishing great e-marketing and brand presence. Both offer great deals in unique ways and Hotwire may very-well win in respect to value--but loses because of its poor marketing strategy. Understandably, Hotwire wants to differentiate itself from its competitors, however, there is a clear reason for why Priceline is the leader in online travel. Hotwire would do well to reflect on its brand and find a more definite direction, target audience, and purpose to attract customers to its products.