Customers of a travel Web site will be plied with free Las Vegas Monorail tickets as part of a new marketing partnership with the struggling rapid transit line that will be unveiled today.

Starting later this month, vegas.com will offer free vouchers for one-way monorail trips to the roughly 10,000 people a day who buy travel products through that site or other sites it runs, including lasvegas.com and espanol.vegas.com.

The vouchers can then be redeemed for a monorail pass at booths that will be set up at monorail stations and manned by vegas.com workers.

Monorail officials hope the free samples will entice some visitors to ride the monorail again on their own dime, boosting sagging ridership and fare box revenue totals.

"One of the things we recognize about the system is when people ride it, they like it," said Curtis Myles, president and CEO of the Las Vegas Monorail Co. "Part of this deal is to get people to come to the station. If they come to the station and try the system, I think we've got a customer."

Terms of the six-month deal, which will include vegas.com ad wraps covering two monorail trains, were not disclosed.

"Whatever we can do to help the city in general is part of our overall mission," said Howard Lefkowitz, president of Henderson-based vegas.com. "We have so much of a vested interest in making sure whatever happens here goes right."

The Web sites, which are seen by more than 2 million visitors daily, will also prominently feature monorail ads.

"It provides us an online presence we currently don't have," Myles said.

Vegas.com is owned by the Greenspun Corp., publisher of the Las Vegas Sun. Lasvegas.com is operated by that firm per agreement with its domain holder, Stephens Media Group, which owns the Review-Journal.

The monorail saw ridership slide to barely 18,000 riders a day in January, well below the 50,000 daily riders once projected and short of the less than 30,000 daily riders carried in 2005.

And the monorail's bond rating is in "junk" status amid daily revenues that are roughly half of what was expected.

The monorail is believed to have lost $20 million last year, though deep cash reserves have kept the rail line afloat.

The monorail has aggressively been trying to sell sponsorship deals for individual trains and naming rights for stations, in hopes of generating more cash.

Recently, the monorail inked a deal with the automaker General Motors to sponsor the Sahara Hotel station.

"It's a crucial component. We really have two large sources of revenue," fares and ads, Myles said. "To the extent we can get a greater amount of our revenue goals from advertising, it helps us.

"We're trying to cultivate these deals as fast as we can," Myles said.

The booths staffed by vegas.com will also allow locals with a valid ID to buy discounted passes now not available at automated ticket kiosks. Most of the booths should be open by the end of next week.