Travelzoo Runs Into Trouble After Gimmick Gets Too Much Attention

from the sorry-'bout-that... dept

Last year we wrote about Travelzoo, the dot com era company that had the gimmick of giving out stock to everyone who signed up to use them. Lots of people did so, and then apparently forgot all about the company (not the greatest marketing gimmick, then, yes?), assuming it went out of business just like every other gimmicky dot com. It turns out it stayed in business, and those shares actually were worth a reasonable amount. Even though many people missed the deadline to redeem those shares, the company agreed to payoff the latecomers as well. Apparently, people suddenly found those Travelzoo shares they thought were worthless, and the company missed its expected numbers by quite a bit because it had to pay out to a bunch of these out of the woodwork shareholders. Seems like a great gimmick, right? Oh right, the company has also been accused of insider trading, probably realizing that they were paying out lots of good money to these not-really-shareholders, and recognizing what that would do to the actual stock.