Atlas Travel International, the first travel management company to agree to resell Portaga Inc.'s technology that allows corporate clients to self-book travel through a desktop application, will receive a share of transaction fees paid to Portaga by other client agencies after providing the technology firm with customer relationship management and traveler-profile tools.
White Plains, N.Y.-based Portaga last month launched the Portaga Travel Manager, which uses a variation of Avis Rent A Car's self-booking technology to pull inventory from the Sabre global distribution system through the Open Travel Alliance's XML platform
(BTN, Sept. 19). Corporations can download the tool into Microsoft Outlook e-mail system and travelers then can search itineraries and book through a desktop application.
Portaga does not sell the technology directly to corporations; rather, it will sell to travel management companies and collect a $2 transaction fee, of which Atlas will receive an unspecified percentage.
"We're going to be involved on an ongoing basis with Portaga," said Atlas president Elaine Osgood. "We hope that the relationship continues to change as the needs of business travelers change. We want to keep them abreast of what's going on. We're very connected to our customers. All of the systems and technology that we have developed is the result of a customer coming to us and saying, 'I like what you do but I only wish you would do it this way' or 'Can you change the system to do this or that?' We continue to tweak our systems based on that need. That is the value that we are going to bring to this relationship."
Osgood said the financial structure between Atlas and Portaga also could evolve. "That part of it is still very new but I believe that it's going to be a transactional—per transaction—kind of relationship," Osgood said. "That really is what travel is right now: a transactional business. We're getting more and more comfortable in that arena."
Portaga, which in a previous iteration helped to develop the Book Avis booking technology, worked with Avis parent Cendant Car Rental Group to adapt it to the Portaga Travel Manager.
"If we can get to our customers first with this technology then we see a competitive advantage," said John Peebles, vice president of online marketing for Cendant Car Rental Group.
Portaga's relationships with Microsoft and Sabre were key to the technological development process.
"Portaga is one of the first significant examples of what we mean by 'smart client' technology—applications which are interoperable by design," said Don Dodge, director of emerging business for Microsoft. "Portaga combines the functionality of Web services with the processing power of the PC. By integrating with Outlook, Portaga will be able to reach a potential audience of 400 million Microsoft Office users through an application they already know and use every day."
"This represents the next phase in our continued commitment to our partner agencies and their customers to provide the most efficient and powerful tools for scheduling and purchasing travel on or offline," according to Greg Webb, senior vice president of marketing for the Sabre Travel Industry Group.
Portaga's next phase will be to attempt to integrate with suppliers that do not list inventory in Sabre, notably Southwest and JetBlue airlines.
"We're in active discussions with many of the world's premier travel suppliers and continue to seek partners that will help strengthen Portaga's comprehensive value to travelers," according to Portaga CEO Robert Kost.
Much of the responsibility for that job will fall to vice president of sales and business development Peggy Lee.
Before joining Portaga, Lee founded and was CEO of well-known meeting attendee management technology firm B-there, which was acquired by StarCite Inc. in 2003
(Meetings Today, Aug. 11, 2003).