Pegasus, Amex Europe In Direct Connect Deal

<B>Pegasus, Amex Europe In Direct Connect Deal</B>

By Jay Campbell

Dallas-based Pegasus Solutions earlier this month agreed to provide American Express' London-based European consortium with direct connections to hotels. Under the agreement, Amex Europe's corporate clients will have the option to circumvent the GDSs for access to the 36,000 properties connected by Pegasus.

"This technology interface will enable Amex's agent 'implants' at select Amex corporate clients' offices to utilize the Amex intranet to query room availability, access corporate negotiated rates, book their clients' hotel reservations and receive a confirmation in seconds," said a statement issued by Pegasus. According to Pegasus spokeswoman Karin Wacaser, Amex selected Pegasus to give its clients the opportunity to save GDS fees for the hoteliers and, in turn, give those hotels more incentive to give Amex better rates. "They're also looking for the functionality that allows them to reach directly into a hotel's res system so the hotel doesn't have to load negotiated rates into the GDS database," said Wacaser. "The only limit on the number of negotiated rates is the number that the hotel wants to put in its own reservations system." The offering is "in the middle of testing" and will be installed "real soon" for interested Amex clients.

According to American Express spokeswoman Melissa Abernathy, the deal appears to be "designed for a number of specific clients. It seems to be for the clients who do their own hotel bookings." She said Amex still will be using the GDSs for the majority of bookings.

In an unrelated announcement, Pegasus also said it will provide hotel inventory to the Hotwire leisure-oriented Web site owned by the Texas Pacific Group and six major U.S.-based airlines. Elsewhere, Pegasus agreed with one of Brazil's largest hotel representation services firms, Interlink, to market Pegasus' commission processing service to Brazilian hotel companies.