Aug. 6--New York's convention and visitors bureaus want to use a mouse to fill their empty hotel rooms with last-minute vacation bargain-hunters. 

The Convention and Visitors Bureau Association of New York has launched HotNYdeals.com, its own offering in the growing field of discount online travel agencies, to tout specials and package deals offered by members of 17 convention and visitors bureaus throughout the state. 

So far, just a few deals -- mostly from the Capital Region -- are posted on the site, which has been up for a couple weeks. 

But by the time the association formally launches the site Sept. 1, it expects to have last-minute deals and offers from New York City to the North Country and Buffalo to the Capital Region, said Gavin Landry, the association's president. 

Landry, who also serves as executive director of the Saratoga Convention and Tourism Bureau in Saratoga Springs, said hotel rooms sometimes can go empty because of last-minute cancellations or due to off-peak times. 

"If people can get a sense of where they can go for these last-minute deals and how they can access them, we think we can bring more of them (visitors) to New York," Landry said. 

The convention and visitors bureaus are trying to lasso their own share of the 60 million Americans who the Travel Industry Association of America in Washington, D.C., estimates used the Internet to plan a vacation last year -- a 395 percent increase from the number of online vacation three years before. 

And hotel rooms are a perishable commodity, said James McKenna, president of the Lake Placid/Essex County Visitors Bureau. 

"You can't put a hotel room in a freezer. If you don't sell it that day, it's gone," he said. 

The Web site does not come up yet on Internet search engines, but Landry said it has had some sporadic traffic already, though he didn't know how many hits. There is a link to the site on the Albany County Convention and Visitors Bureau's site. 

The deals include a $60 golfing and hotel room package in Lake Placid, and a $119 deal for a hotel room, admission to the track in Saratoga, some drinks and snacks. 

Landry said the deals the association posts must include lodging. It's up to the hotels to piece together any packages. 

And while areas such as Lake George do well in the warm summer months, "Every area has a shoulder season that they need help with," said Jason Sherry, executive director of the Lake George/Adirondack Region Convention and Visitors Bureau. 

Last-minute travel sites have been on the rise in recent years, but this one may be the first that touts travel deals in a specific state, travel industry watchers say. 

And there's a market out there waiting to be captured, said Cathy Keefe, a spokeswoman with the Travel Industry Association of America. 

One-third of online travel shoppers make their plans within two weeks of the trip, she said. And a growing number of travelers are eschewing travel brochures for quick online information about potential destinations. 

"What that really says is that the destination should be offering the latest and greatest information because you only have one chance to get their attention," Keefe said. 

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