Southwest Airlines online with lasvegas.com

Wednesday, Oct. 12, 2005 | 7:35 a.m.

For the first time, Southwest Airlines travel packages are going to be sold on a Web site Southwest doesn't control.

In a deal slated to be announced today, the airline's Southwest Airlines Vacations partner has entered an agreement with lasvegas.com to sell package deals for air fares and hotel rooms.

Southwest flights and travel packages are not sold on major Internet travel sites Orbitz, Travelocity or Expedia because the Dallas-based airline has wanted to maintain control over the deals its vacation site offers.

Terms of the airline's groundbreaking deal were not disclosed. Lasvegas.com is expected to begin selling the Southwest packages in early November.

Lasvegas.com is operated by The Greenspun Corporation, which also owns the Web site VEGAS.com. The Greenpun family publishes the Sun.

"It's a nice mix between a company that does very well in Vegas and our company," said Rich Basen, vice president and general manager of Orlando-based Southwest Airlines Vacations, which is operated by Milwaukee-based Mark Travel Corp.

Basen said his company's motivation for entering the deal is to generate more business for the airline, which is McCarran International Airport's busiest passenger carrier with about 200 flights a day.

"We've chosen to create a one-of-a-kind relationship with lasvegas.com because of its Las Vegas dominance in local expertise, presence and traffic," he said.

The significance of Southwest choosing to open up its partnership arrangement for the first time isn't lost on Howard Lefkowitz, who heads lasvegas.com.

"I believe it's a tribute to our organization and our market scale that attracted Southwest to us," Lefkowitz said. "The fact that they haven't had relationships like this speaks volumes about what we do."

The Greenspun family acquired the rights to operate the lasvegas.com domain name from Stephens Media Intellectual Property LLC in June. When the acquisition was made, officials of VEGAS.com, which has been in business since 1996, said they hoped to exploit the popularity of the two sites to generate tourism business.

Lefkowitz said VEGAS.com has grown significantly since its inception. The site, dedicated to Las Vegas tourism, draws nearly 3 million visits a month and has been cited as one of the top 50 travel Web sites in the world and among the top 1 percent of all sites on the Internet. It is the only Southern Nevada site to achieve that status.

Consumers benefit when they purchase travel and lodging in package deals from third-party sellers because airline and hotel partners can discount their prices. Local resorts also are winners because the third parties help fill the resorts with paying customers without additional marketing expenses.

VEGAS.com partners with the vacation arm of McCarran's second-largest carrier, US Airways, which merged with America West Airlines. Lefkowitz said VEGAS.com would continue to partner with America West Vacations, which will eventually become US Airways Vacations.

It's unclear whether Southwest would enter partnerships with other third-party travel sellers in the future.

"This is a new thing for us," Basen said of Mark Travel, which has been the exclusive vacation package operator for Southwest since 1989. "We wanted to get our feet wet, and Las Vegas is the perfect place to delve into something new."

Richard N. Velotta can be reached at 259-4061 or at velotta@ lasvegassun.com.