Fancy a night in a luxury penthouse? Just $10,000 with your half-off coupon
It's not just half-off your meal at local restaurants that the bargain seekers are going for now with their online coupons...
The one-night stay at the hotel's 6,000-square-foot penthouse and a one-day rental of a Maserati Quattroporte would normally have cost $20,000. LivingSocial, sold 115 coupons for the offer, its most expensive ever.
The move upmarket is reported in Business Week. Both sites started with low-cost items like restaurant meals, manicures and yoga sessions. Now both are are seeking buyers "willing to spend hundreds or even thousands of dollars on travel and luxury goods,"says the magazine.
Rob Solomon, president of Groupon, said they were finding that people move up and down between categories. ":Sometimes they want a sandwich, and sometimes, a $100 meal." Groupon has already sold $499 Dutch bicycles and $2,000 Lasiksurgery.
When it started in November 2008, Groupon's customers were city-based college students. Now it has more than 60 million subscribers in 42 countries.
"We started finding deals that appeal to older couples or mums," Solomon said.
Groupon usually takes a 50 percent slice of the offer price, while LivingSocial collects 35 percent. The Fairmont deal brought in $1.15 million for LivingSocial and the hotel.
As Groupon and similar sites compete with Travelocity and Expedia in the hotel market, they will probably sell about $267 million worth of hotel rooms in the U.S. this year, analyst Henry Harteveldt told the magazine.
LivingSocial is also marketing excursions called Adventures. The company organises and takes customers on trips, such as a $100 snow-tubing outing followed by a visit to a local brewery. By the end of the year, Adventures will be in 24 cities, up from eight today, said a spokeswoman for LivingSocial.
Groupon, meanwhile, is going into air travel . Last month, it offered a $7 voucher worth $77 worth for certain flights on Virgin America.