Cendant Travel Distribution Services subsidiary Travelport Corporate Solutions last month aligned with The EventQuest Group, a full-service meetings management and production firm, forming an unusual combination of travel and meeting services, including production, meetings technology, online booking, global distribution services and fulfillment.
Travelport's desire to add meeting production and management to its suite of tools and New York-based EventQuest's inclination to broaden its technology services beyond attendee management to fulfillment prompted the deal, which officials said quickly came together. The common thread is SeeUthere Technologies, now OnVantage
(see story). EventQuest is a licensed distributor of SeeUthere technology and uses it to manage registration and housing. Travelport's legacy online booking tool, Highwire, in 2002 aligned with SeeUthere to offer attendees online booking services.
"One of the best things we've done is to integrate with SeeUthere," said Travelport vice president of products and marketing Charlotte Blackwell. "This expands on that. We are the only major business travel service able to offer a complete set of meeting planning services."
Travelport most often will work with Questrians, a division within EventQuest that manages most client meetings and events. Other EventQuest divisions include a public relations firm and a rental service for high-end furniture, lighting and decor elements.
According to Questrians CEO Eileen Wingate—Business Travel News' 1989 Travel Manager of the Year—EventQuest clients sought further technology offerings, particularly regarding fulfillment. "We already were looking to improve our offerings, and we wanted to tie into an online booking tool with the service behind it," she said. "Everybody wants to control expenses, including the cost of ticketing. We wanted to improve on that."
All meeting services provided through EventQuest will involve a single point of contact, said Travelport program manager for consulting services Robert Pollio. "There will be a needs determination of meeting services required, including planning, online registration and reservations," he said.
Specific methods of pricing will depend on the services rendered, but EventQuest generally will retain revenue generated from meetings management services while Travelport will retain associated transaction fees, Wingate said. However, the deal includes language requiring each firm to promote each other's services and tools to their respective clients.
Though the deal was not finalized until later in the month, EventQuest in early August produced a hospitality suite for Travelport at the National Business Travel Association's annual convention in Orlando. That likely will be the first of many such productions, as EventQuest now will manage events throughout Cendant's many divisions.
"We considered a lot of companies, but we wanted one that best fits with our organizational philosophy," Blackwell said. "We wanted something different that would differentiate us."
That seems certain, as no other entity can offer the breadth of associated services as can the Travelport-EventQuest alliance. Through Cendant, Travelport offers access to the Galileo GDS, automated ticketing and fulfillment and online booking. Though the Sabre Holdings corporate family offers the Sabre GDS, fulfillment and online booking and attendee management through its DirectCorporate tool, the firm has not yet aligned with a specific meeting production and management vendor. When it was a separate company, Amadeus' E-Travel online booking tool formed a marketing alliance with meeting technology firm StarCite, but neither company has gone out of its way to emphasize the alliance and little has come of it. Despite occasional flashes of public interest, Worldspan never has dipped its toes into meetings management.
The question that will determine the success of the alliance between Travelport and EventQuest is whether corporate clients actually need or want those services through a single point of contact.
"The short answer is no," said Bob Lichtman, a principal of Menlo Park, Calif.-based consulting firm Corporate Solutions Group. "The longer answer is that all activities and functionalities these systems enhance business travel solutions with, including meetings, is positive. If they can drive value by placing those components together, more power to them, but meetings is a whole different animal."
"I haven't personally heard of the need for this, but it is a natural trend," said Corbin Ball, meetings technology consultant and president of Bellingham, Wash.-based Corbin Ball Associates. "Meetings management is a big pie, and there is a lot of money there. These transient technology companies do not have a good handle on it. That's why you have seen Expedia buy Metropolitan Travel and Orbitz partner with David Green, because it's natural for them to do that."
More such alliances are inevitable, Ball said. "It is an irreversible trend," he said. "The Web is there for people to book hotel and air, and there are these 800-pound gorillas with very deep pockets waiting to move into the meetings space."
Both Travelport and EventQuest said the alliance was driven by client request. "It will be interesting to see if other companies follow suit and this becomes a trend," Pollio said. "We are on the leading edge of it."
The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.