This Travel-Booking Website Loves It When You Call

You know the four largest online travel agents: Priceline, Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity. The fifth? It’s a privately held website with an old-school strategy: live human travel agents available via phone or Web chat. You’ve never heard of it?

That’s one reason Cheapoair.com has been plastering trains, subway platforms, and buses across the New York City metro area with billboards and other marketing touts, hoping to boost its profile and sales in the fiercely contested online-travel market. Stuck on all those posters is an 800-number that puts callers in touch with a real person in India, Canada, or Las Vegas, someone ready to talk about your trip all day, every day. These are “contact center,” if you please. Cheapoair executives avoid the term call center, partly because the company doesn’t outsource any of the telephone work and partly because its employees also conduct live text-based chats.