<B> Direct Connections Near</B>
<I>Cos. Race To Allow Group Booking Sans CRS</I>
By Chris Davis
Two new and competing alliances--each including a travel technology heavyweight and an Internet company--are vowing to make it possible to book group reservations at negotiated rates without a CRS intermediary before the year 2000.
Pegasus Systems of Dallas late last month teamed with Internet group-housing provider Passkey.com of Quincy, Mass., to offer a direct connection through Pegasus' hotel switch. The companies expect to be ready to book by the end of this year.
Just one week later, WizCom International, Pegasus' Parsippany, N.J.-based competitor, announced a similar deal with Jade Technologies of Dallas, whose WynTrac software provides group reservation solutions. Pushing up the deadline, the WizCom/Jade system plans to begin booking by this summer.
When the systems are fully functional, meeting planners and attendees will be able to make real-time group reservations through the two Web sites, which will link through Pegasus or WizCom directly to participating hotels. The attendee or planner immediately will receive a confirmation number, and hotels and planners will be able to access and view rooming lists, adjust them and produce reports.
Direct connections to hotels have long been sought by the meetings industry, but while there's been talk of systems in development, none has yet been able to deliver a solution. "If people could go online, book their group reservations and get confirmation electronically, that would be a wonderful thing," said Coleman, the tech-savvy Mineral Point, Wis.-based independent planner.
The alliances would receive a fee for every reservation booked through their systems, though presumably a lower one than the CRSs now charge.
There are differences between the two alliances. Pegasus, whose THISCO switch connects major hotels to the global distribution systems, already has signed up Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott and Starwood to use its new processing capabilities. WizCom has no hotel partners yet, but it is owned by Cendant Corp., which owns more than 5,000 hotels across several brands, including Howard Johnson and Ramada, and Avis Rent A Car.
"We've talked to several hotel companies and they've expressed great interest," said WizCom president Flo Lugli. "As we develop the product and the interface, we'll work with hotels to get them online."
The primary benefit for planners is the savings in time the new interfaces offer. Group reservations and rooming lists always have been labor-intensive, with planners usually required to create the lists themselves and fax or e-mail them to the hotel, which often enters the names into its reservation system manually.
Hoteliers also would see yield management benefits from the ability to examine their room blocks in real time.
There are questions, though, as to whether the new interfaces will be able to bring the same benefits to the corporate meetings market--and to short-term meetings in particular--that they could to larger citywide meetings and conventions planned by associations. Attendees themselves book and pay for their own reservations far more frequently for association conventions than employees do for corporate meetings, where planners often handle all hotel reservations centrally.
There is also the question of whether hoteliers will be inclined to release room blocks for short-term corporate meetings. That is a concern that Pegasus president and CEO John Davis III acknowledged will have to become more commonplace before the corporate market realizes the full benefits of these interfaces.
"We are getting pressure from the hotel industry as well as corporate travel managers for some way to provide electronic access for those 15- to 25-room corporate meetings that are driving everybody crazy," Davis said. "The technical process is not that difficult. We can do it today, if the hotels would allow for the availability search of more than four rooms. But then the question becomes how long a hotel should hold inventory before contracts can be signed."
There are other considerations, too, including the relationship of hotel meeting space and food and beverage service with the interfaces. Lugli said the WizCom-Jade alliance will be able to include these charges. "It's fully comprehensive," she said. "It's flexible enough to provide solutions for citywides and small meetings. We have a very diverse customer group--hotels that would partake in all citywides and large accounts, but also those whose major market is the 50- to 100-attendee meetings. We wanted a solution applicable for all."
Time will tell, but Earl Foster, director of global travel management for Joseph E. Seagram & Sons of New York, is optimistic that an electronic solution for corporate groups is in the offing. Foster, who will serve on a task force organized by Davis to address the corporate market and the Pegasus/Passkey role in it, said that with leadership and direction, an industry-wide initiative focused on providing corporate solutions can be developed.
"We've talked about this for way too long, and it's time to have something deliverable to corporate travel folks," Foster said. "Companies have tried to get their arms around meeting and event planning for a long time but we've just never been able to do it. So to have tools available that we can entice our event planners with, and deliverables so that we can download data that we haven't been able to get before, is very timely and very good. I think Davis and his company will be able to deliver."
Foster agreed that the airline-owned CRSs don't offer the capabilities companies need for group hotel reservations. "We've all said for a long time that there's no value to us in using the GDS for this kind of transaction anyway. What we really need is a gateway-type of approach, where we could go directly in and get inventory at the time. The GDS didn't give us that, and we can improve the process."
Passkey.com president and CEO Roger Paradis said the alliance can convince the hotels that releasing larger room blocks at later dates is in their best interests. "I think a Passkey-Pegasus alliance can show the way in which that can be done, where the hotels don't lose control and others gain some benefit from having access to some of these modifications prior to the final transmission of the rooming lists directly into the system. As long as the hotels have access to what's going on, they can do a better job of their yield management."
Still, Lugli and Jade technologies president and CEO Michael Foster stressed that their alliance provides the corporate planner and the corporation with value because of time saved and increased efficiency.
"This product, while it works well for citywides, has applications for smaller meetings, and will be able to push the administration down to the lowest level, the meeting attendee," Lugli said. "If they are able to go online to do all that administration, it will cut the planner's work. Jade, through WynTrac, will provide all the required ports meeting planners need. It should help streamline the process for corporate planners who are working under shorter lead times and must react much more quickly."
Lugli added that WizCom and Jade also are exploring applications of their alliance for the car rental industry.