- Destinationcoupons.com, the world's first
Internet site to distribute tourist discount coupons, sets up a
special page for Turkey. Sales coupons for hotels, stores, restaurants
and cafes can be found on this site
Guzin Yildizcan
Istanbul - Turkish Daily News
A United States-based tourism company is now
offering coupons to people who want to spend their vacations in
Istanbul, Antalya or Bodrum. Their coupons provide a 60 percent discount
on hotel reservations and a 20 percent discount in cafes, restaurants
and stores.
People can benefit from this opportunity by
logging onto
www.destinationcoupons.com and getting a printout of the hotels,
restaurants, cafes and stores that are participating in the program.
Visitors to this Web site can learn about all
kinds of tourist activities in the United States and Turkey. The
destinationcoupons.com site, which is one of a kind, has been in
operation for three years now.
Suat Gulec, chairman of destinationcoupons.com,
stated that the company offered discounts exclusively for Colorado
during the first three years of its existence and started a page for
Turkey four months ago. Stating that visitors can easily access this
site which is contributing to the promotion of Turkey worldwide, Gulec
said, "Destinationcoupons.com can be reached through Yahoo or AltaVista
by entering the words 'Istanbul coupon' at the search screen."
Stating that the site has 60 participants in
Turkey -- including the Istanbul Cinar Hotel, the Surmeli Hotel, Vakko
Department Store, Tike Restaurant, and Beyti Restaurant -- Gulec
outlined its distinguishing features:
"You can get tourism information about Turkey
through
www.destinationcoupons.com. Additionally, when you make hotel
reservations through our site, you get a 60 percent discount, which
wouldn't be available in any other way. For instance, you couldn't get a
similar reduction if you visited the Web site of that particular hotel.
"If you reserve your room through a travel agency,
they charge a certain commission. But we don't take commissions from
hotels or customers and the discount is taken from the hotel's actual
price. The reason that we don't charge commission is that we get an
annual membership fee."
How can the coupons be used?
The coupons for Turkey are not valid for Turkish
citizens. (They can, however, use the sales coupons for other countries
on this site.) They can be used by any foreigner who decides to go to
Turkey, enters the address destinationcoupons.com and decides to make a
hotel reservation -- or stays at the house of a friend, for that matter.
He can visit the shopping areas, cafes and restaurants on the site and
print out sales coupons after he gets information about meal choices,
prices, decor, the address of the restaurant and so on. All foreigners
living in Turkey and tourists can benefit from this coupon program.
Gulec stated that some people who wish to use
coupons are asked for passports in certain shops and restaurants, but
some of them do not even need it. The coupons are also valid also for
the patron's friends.
Destination.com Marketing Director Donna Gulec
said that the site could be reached easily and added: "All foreigners
now have a reliable friend in Turkey ... Only your closest friends would
provide this service for you while expecting nothing in return." She
noted that visitors at the site can observe the quick growth in the
number of participating companies. "Our Turkey page had only general
tourist information about Turkey until three months ago," she added.
"Today we have 60 participating companies and our aim is to reach 1,000
companies by year's end."
The destinationcoupons.com Web site hopes to set
up pages on Las Vegas, New York, Miami, Orlando, San Francisco and
Hawaii. Its next target countries are England and Italy. |
