The UFC announced a partnership Thursday with online travel company Orbitz Worldwide in which UFC fans can book domestic and international travel from the UFC web site.
From the UFC press release:
Almost 42 percent of fans attending a live UFC event travel from another state or country. Thus, UFC officials saw a growing need to team with a travel company that could provide comprehensive travel packages both domestically and internationally. By collaborating with Orbitz Worldwide, the UFC will be able to deliver a diverse array of travel products to its fans and allow them to book their entire trip package on UFC.com.
Payout Perspective:
The UFC-Orbitz partnership will enable fans to travel to more events and book hotels, flights and car rentals through UFC.com. This move gives fans the ability to turn a UFC event into a mini-vacation. Although the frugal traveler could probably cobble together their own itinerary to a UFC event, the travel packages offer ease of use as a one stop source. With the future expansion of shows in new domestic markets and internationally, the move to partner with a travel agent makes sense for the UFC. It will be interesting to see how many fans take advantage of this service.
Good deal. Immediately, I’m thinking there is a wealth of interesting activation elements that the UFC and Orbitz could pull off; everything from using holiday packages as #Hunt4UFC prizes, to commercials featuring Dana or popular UFC fighters, live event components that involve handouts/discounts to drive impressions. There’s also great potential here for cross-promotional activation between Orbitz and other UFC partners like Bud Light or Harley Davidson.
I thought this is what the UFC was working towards when Allegiant Air made a brief appearance as title sponsor last March on its Versus card, but that just turned out to be a trade in-kind for airfare to a sponsorship summit.