Carriers Set Sites On Web

<B> Carriers Set Sites On Web</B>

By David Jonas

Continental, Delta, Northwest and United recently announced a joint travel portal on the Internet that will provide visitors access to published airfares from numerous airlines, as well as information on hotels and rental cars. The site, expected to debut in the first half of next year, also will list Web specials from the various airlines. A separate management team, to be named later, will run and name the site.

The portal will serve as competition to the recently merged Travelocity/Preview Travel site--the nation's largest--which is run by American parent company AMR Corp. and its Sabre group.

"It wasn't a response to AMR and Sabre, we had been working on the site for over six months," said Bruce Parker, United's chief information officer. "However, we did not even approach AMR because of their heavily vested interest in Travelocity, but we welcome American as a participant to list on the site, the way we do with Travelocity."

Though the site will not offer access to corporate rates, it will provide another tool for travelers to seek out lowest possible airfares. Though the specifics have yet to be determined, Parker indicated that at least one GDS could be used to hold reservations, but the relationships would not be traditional.

"We have a suspicion that there will be a GDS involved that would give a significant discount on the normal retail rate," said Bill Brunger, Continental's vice president of distribution planning and revenue decision support. While there is some industry speculation that Worldspan--partially owned by two of the site's founders, Delta and Worldspan--could be the GDS employed for the portal, no decisions have been made. "There probably will be an RFP process where we go out and ask the GDSs how little they'd be willing to get in return for backing the system."

"We are very excited about the portal because online booking revenue has been relatively small so far, maybe 2 to 3 percent of our business," Brunger continued. "In three years from now, online bookings will represent something like 10 percent, which would be split 50-50 by our own Web site and other various online portals."

For United, the site adds another element to its online presence, which includes its own Web site and the recently launched Star Alliance portal (<I>BTN</I>, Oct. 25).

The same holds true for Delta, though a new site with its alliance partner Air France still is in the pipeline. "Airlines are very effective in drawing brand-loyal customers to their own Web sites, but there is a very large customer base that is price-sensitive and prefers to shop all carriers," said Steve Scheper, Delta's general manager, agency and corporate program development. "Having market share is the key point; General Mills has more than one brand of cereal.