Hotels.com, Southwest Use Sales As Measure Of Web Success; Both firms say process of shifting customers to Web is slow, but worth it.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)(MANAGING A SUCCESSFUL COMPANY)

Byline: MICHAEL KREY

Among the benefits of the Web is this: It's a marketer's dream when it comes to the key measure of return on investment.

There isn't any fancy marketing mumbo-jumbo when you ask Hotels.com or Southwest Airlines Co. about Web marketing.

Hotels.com and Southwest track their online efforts day by day -- and measure success in rising sales.

"That's our bottom-line focus," said Robert Diener, president of Hotels.com. "Every $1 we spend on any marketing has to bring in $1-plus, or we change it."

For both firms, marketing includes a fair percentage of offline work, where ROI is tougher to measure. Both say shifting more users to the Web is a marathon, not a sprint. But the rewards of doing so are obvious.

Hotels.com -- the company recently agreed to be totally bought by majority owner USA Interactive -- reported a profit of $1.50 a share on sales of $945 million in 2002. That's up from 2 cents on $68 million as recently as 1998. It takes phone orders, but it books the great bulk of its rooms via its Web site.