<B>TechTalk</B>
By Cheryl Rosen
<B>Travel Mgrs. Are On The Move...</B>
The travel industry is moving at Internet speed, and so too are some of its top players. Two former BTN Travel Managers of the Year--Fred Swaffer and Colleen Guhin--are moving to companies that didn't exist just months ago. Swaffer, founder of the <B>Hewlett-Packard</B> travel program, has spent the past few months bringing the program to Asia/Pacific. Regarding details of the business plan of <B>BTExchange.com</B>, the venture capital-based startup he joined on April 1, Swaffer did not "want to divulge what we plan to do and have somebody beat us to the table." But he did acknowledge that BTExchange.com "hopes to provide an exchange of information and agreements between business travel suppliers and corporate travel managers, helping folks in negotiations with airlines, hotels, car rental companies, etc." The point is not consulting, but rather providing "an interface for people to exchange positions back and forth." Swaffer is industry relations advisor for the new company. Guhin, meanwhile, will leave <B>Motorola</B> on May 1 to join <B>ON Semiconductor</B>, a Phoenix-based company that spun off from Motorola on Aug. 1, 1999. Her new role will offer the "exciting challenge and opportunity to develop the ON Semiconductor travel program from the ground up," she said. Guhin, an early believer in online booking technology, sold the concept--and successfully rolled out the technology--to both <B>Texas Instruments</B> and Motorola.
<A NAME="2"><B>...And So Is Amadeus</B>
<B>Amadeus</B> this month is rolling out a new travel agency product called Travel Choice. Designed to automate the process of applying travel policies to bookings in the GDS, the system also allows greater flexibility--and more data fields--to track such customer preferences as frequent flyer programs, and prepopulates the information into the booking. "Keeping pace with the proliferating variety of corporate travel policies is a growing headache for business travel agents" in a highly competitive environment, and their success depends upon the ability "to get service right," said Amadeus senior vice president of corporate strategy Philippe Chérèque. "With Amadeus Travel Choice, agents can give instant, rules-compliant advice and offer their business customer a choice of travel options that fits their travel preferences while simultaneously ensuring that bookings are fully compliant with corporate travel policies." More than 100 agencies in 10 countries have piloted the system since November 1999, the company said. Travel Choice will roll out first in the United States and then go global. Amadeus this month also launched eviaggi.com, an online consumer site for the Italian market, as a joint venture with local media company <B>Gruppo L'Espresso</B>. As part of that announcement, the GDS noted that it shortly will allow online customers to pay for their travel through bank transfers rather than credit cards. Calling this "the first of a number of planned e-commerce joint ventures to go online," Amadeus later this year will launch "a similar venture with <B>Terra Networks</B>" targeting more than 500 million Spanish- and Portuguese-speaking consumers in 26 countries.
<A NAME="3"><B>CAIS Goes Corporate</B>
<B>CAIS Internet</B>, a provider of broadband technology to the hotel industry, this month will launch a discount program for corporations that will link travelers to their internal networks through 9,000 properties nationwide. But perhaps more interesting than the lower cost, its new corporate program offers the promise of secure links to corporate networks. CAIS Internet, available in 100 <B>Hilton</B> Hotels and 75 other properties, now is deploying its broadband service nationwide--and finding "the biggest problem is the inability to get into internal corporate networks. So we're going to help streamline that. We don't require the business traveler to have any special hardware or software, and we will work with your MIS department to create a seamless business traveler network on a compatible system," said director of corporate relations Minda Markle. "An independent business traveler can check into a CAIS hotel and just use the service. But if 80 percent of your company is on the road, we can make a deal for you--and if you have five remote field offices, you can get a virtual network that runs parallel to your corporate network, so field office people can easily get into your internal system." A dedicated team of CAIS folks now is approaching Fortune 1000 companies "to explain the service and help customers understand how they can find a CAIS hotel, the security we provide and the pricing" they can expect, Markle said.