WorldTravel Meetings & Incentives has re-entered the meetings technology realm with a new product that offers attendee management services, including online travel booking at the point of attendee registration and two-way interfaces with three global distribution systems. A companion meeting management technology product is expected to be released in the second quarter.
WTMI, the meetings management arm of WorldTravel BTI, currently has "six or seven" clients for the product, dubbed Plan2Attend, said president Scott Graf, including "a large financial institution on the East Coast."
The tool, nine months in development, represents a re-entry into the meetings technology market for WTMI after technology partner TRX Inc. ceased offering MeetingAssist, the travel management company's previous meeting technology package, in mid-2001
(Meetings Today, Aug. 13, 2001). TRX has had no role in the development of Plan2Attend. About 45 clients that still are using the MeetingAssist platform will be transitioned to Plan2Attend, officials said.
There are key differences between Plan2Attend and MeetingAssist, said Graf, who was not with WTMI during the development and effective demise of the latter product. The new product allows booking at the point of registration through Outtask Inc.'s Cliqbook self-booking tool and an interface with Sabre, Apollo and Worldspan that allows the transmission of passenger name records to match air bookings and hotel rooming lists with attendee lists.
"The product that was developed in the past was server-based and this is Web-based," Graf said. "It was good enough then, but not now. Plus, the sales and marketing could be better today than it has been in the past. We have upgraded the air portion and the security is better. All the features are 18 months better."
Still, WorldTravel Meetings & Incentives' re-entry comes at a time when the market is arguably crowded with similar products and solutions, many with similar functionality to Plan2Attend, from both independent technology providers and other travel and meeting management companies.
"The pie is big enough from my perspective," Graf said. "We continue to find that planners have not found a solution to meet all their needs. Plus, the competition is not part of a $4 billion company and the space is smaller than it was in July."
Graf was referring to the demise of high-profile attendee-management application Event411 (Meetings Today, Aug. 12, 2002). "We have a stable environment and we are financially sound," he said.
Other features include the construction of dedicated Web sites for events and an electronic marketing package.
WTMI is not yet offering the meetings management portion of Plan2Attend, which will include planning, purchasing, budgeting and request for proposals tools, officials said, primarily because attendee management applications are more popular in the meetings market. "A lot of companies see the greatest opportunity for quick return on investment with attendee applications," said Plan2Attend product manager Bill Chapdelaine. "They can see the productivity savings, and it can determine how they want to advance on the financial side."
WTMI's Plan2Attend pricing strategy includes an implementation fee, transaction fees and some charges for additional training and customization, all variable. The company, Graf said, is open to other pricing arrangements.