TRAVEL TRADE TESTS TV SHOP WINDOW

BATTLE has begun for a new slice of the travel industry which one participant believes could be worth nearly GBP 500 million annually in five years' time.

The weekend saw the launch of the first home shopping travel channel, TV Travel Shop. Another channel, Wow Television International, is due to begin test transmissions very shortly and to be fully operational by the end of the year.

Both channels will go out via satellite initially but will be available for the cable operators. The new ventures are looking to be the complete selling device - from the alluring images of where you can go and for how much to the telephone operators waiting for your call to book a package. However, they will be taking rather different approaches. TV Travel Shop will be targeting the housewife as the believed source of most bookings, while Wow Television International, which is happily admiting to being a mix of "Baywatch with Harrods", intends to feature a stream of beautiful women. "We definitely have a different approach," says Wow TVI vice- president Noel Adams-Tate. "We're looking more forward to the hi-tech future and aiming for a younger audience." Joint managing director of the Flex-tech-backed TV Travel Shop, Harry Goodman, is well known in the travel business. He built the International Leisure Group into Britain's second-largest tour operator but then saw it crash in 1991. He believes that his new venture will be able to undercut the High Street travel agency and he promises "a fun experience for people in their home". "We've done a lot of work on this and had a survey conducted in which 84% of the people said they would use this service if the product was right." Analysts see the home television-travel approach as an exciting concept with a lot of potential, while existing travel agencies will be clearly a little more than just interested observers. Wow TVI's Adams-Tate said if the home shopping companies can start to make inroads on the GBP 9 billion a year UK travel market, this must have an impact. "It must mean that the High Street retailers will feel the pinch," he said. Goodman is claiming an early advantage over his competitor in that his channel is going out via tradi- tional and more widely available analogue technology, as well as the more modern digital TV, while Wow TVI will start on digital. "Digital is certainly of the future, but analogue is the here and now," he said. Wow TVI for its part believes that it has something of coup with its booking system which features a network of 160 travel specialists working from home, while Travel TV has set up a call centre in Bromley, Kent. Wow TVI's service will also be on the internet, while TV Travel Shop plans to introduce this in future.

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