<B>TechTalk</B>
<B>E-Travel Founder Steps Down</B>
E-Travel founder, CEO and president John Ackermann has left the company to pursue undisclosed interests. "This is something an entrepreneur tends to do," said Bart Littlefield, E-Travel vice president of marketing. "Our revenues have been up 150 percent each month this year under his guidance and we continue to get great support from Oracle. In fact, we met with [Oracle chairman and CEO] Larry Ellison a few weeks ago, when he reconfirmed his commitment to us." Littlefield said the company is not sure of a timetable on replacing Ackermann, who helped lay much of the groundwork for automated corporate travel booking industrywide. Ackermann also was an early facilitator of non-GDS connections to suppliers. His sale of E-Travel Inc. to Oracle last year (BTN, March 22, 1999) earned him a spot on BTN's list of the 25 most influential executives in corporate travel (BTN, Jan. 10).
<B><A NAME="2">Travelocity Enters Corporate Market</B>
Travelocity, as of Oct. 6, had signed a dozen corporate clients to its new Business Travel Center, which allows small companies to designate a single travel arranger and credit card for bookings affecting multiple travelers.
<B><A NAME="3">ASP Model Lures Expense Vendor InterPro</B>
Like one of its larger competitors, Concur (BTN, Aug. 14), expense system vendor InterPro is refocusing its business model to become more of an application service provider than a software licenser. As such, the Pleasanton, Calif.-based company last week released Expense Express ASP, T&E software hosted by InterPro rather than installed at a corporate site. "Rather than requiring employees to complete an expense report at the end of every month, Expense Express ASP allows companies to efficiently manage, track and reimburse employee-incurred expenses in real-time," said an InterPro news release. The company had taken some heat from customers of late, in part for not keeping up with competitors on product advancements (BTN, Oct. 2).
<B><A NAME="4">Sabre/GetThere Closing Merger, Link With Alaska Air</B>
Sabre expects to complete its acquisition of GetThere Inc. this week following the tender of more than 90 percent of GetThere's outstanding shares (BTN, Sept. 4). Meanwhile, both companies announced new business with Alaska Airlines. Sabre will provide Alaska with an Internet booking engine to handle hotel and car rentals, making alaskaair.com one of the first airline sites to do so. According to Alaska's manager of corporate Internet sales, Bob Dersé, the hotel and car options will be added to Alaska's EasyBiz product for small and midsize businesses, though not initially with corporate rates. Sabre's GetThere unit added Alaska to its list of vendors planning to connect to GetThere without a GDS. In an unrelated announcement, GetThere revealed that Carlson Wagonlit was among the agencies, including American Express, that planned to market its midmarket product (BTN, Oct. 2).
<B><A NAME="5">Sabre Automates Commissions</B>
Sabre has signed American, British Airways and United airlines to launch in 1Q 2001 Sabre's new Compensation Manager software that automates commission payments to agencies and cuts down on debit memos.
<B><A NAME="6">Web Bookings, United's Dip Hurt Galileo</B>
Galileo International last week said it expects to meet the average of third-quarter earnings estimates by Wall Street analysts when it reports results next week, despite lower than expected global bookings. Analysts predict the company will earn 70 cents per share before special items. Galileo expects to report 5 percent year-over-year revenue growth. Bookings continue to suffer from the "impact of the shift in bookings from traditional travel agencies to Internet travel sites, where Galileo's market share is lower; the impact of a slowdown in traffic at a major airline customer," United, and "an increased number of cancellations of waitlist and other non-ticketed bookings, which reduced the net billable segments in the quarter," the company announced. "We expect our U.S. volumes to improve in future quarters as we benefit from the significant number of incremental segments that we have won. However, the conversion of several of these accounts is taking longer than originally anticipated," said Cheryl Ballenger, executive vice president and CFO.
<B><A NAME="7">Gelco Drops Extensity Technology For Its Own</B>
Gelco Information Network said it will no longer distribute its ExpenseLink product incorporating technology provided by Extensity, and instead will focus on its HTML- and JavaScript-based ExpenseLink/Direct 4.0. Having developed the Internet-based technology in-house, Gelco said it would be capable of responding to customer and partner needs "more expediently." New features include charge card transaction presentment, manager approval and adjustment and co-branding/private labeling.