GetThere, Galileo Customize

<B>GetThere, Galileo Customize</B>

By Jay Campbell

GetThere Inc. this week will launch a new product designed to let airlines, travel agencies and others customize booking sites for small and midsize business customers. The move follows by a week Galileo International's announcement of its own customizable booking product for market by agencies.

Galileo conducted "limited market tests" with seven regional agencies during the first half of the year, then expanded that to more than 30 of all sizes just prior to launch. The product incorporates the PrivateFares and PrivateFares II functionality for negotiated rates.

GetThere said American Express and three other agencies are deploying "Mid-Market." The product offers reporting, administrative and management capabilities, as well as booking. It expands on GetThere's prior ventures with Amex and British Airways to serve small and midsize enterprises. GetThere gained more than 1,000 new clients through Amex.

According to GetThere, it is "the first to deliver a custom Web site for employee travel booking that they can design and launch within a few minutes." After receiving a PIN, GetThere said travel administrators can configure in a little more than a dozen steps a custom booking site that offers travel policies, vendor preferences, personal profiles and design options.

GetThere based development on its patent-pending SuperSite capability, which allows one central booking system to contain multiple subsites that can be customized to support the different requirements of individual businesses, including GDSs, agencies, travel policies, administrative functions and air, car and hotel contracts. Also used by GetThere's large corporate accounts, SuperSite provides a single management platform with consolidated information and reporting for all of the subsites.

"We bore the brunt of the SuperSite development when we did the Star Alliance Web site, where you have global, multi-currency, multi-GDS demands with different ticket printers, fulfillment needs and ARC accounts," said Jeff Palmer, GetThere's vice president of strategic development. "It was a small matter of programming," he joked.

Palmer expects Mid-Market's ease of use, backed by SuperSite, will set GetThere apart from the new and established midmarket providers. "On paper, it's feasible that others could develop it," said Palmer, referring to SuperSite. "It will be interesting to see who is most successful cracking the midmarket."

Indeed, smaller and midsize corporations that want to automate travel have a complicated array of choices, from such consumer sites as Expedia and Travelocity to such unmanaged business travel sites as Biztravel.com and Trip.com, to scaled-down versions of the large-market systems or full versions of products from start-up vendors.

But it appears that many travel decision makers at smaller companies are looking to leverage their agency and supplier relationships. Some buyers are looking for a hands-off solution, such as the corporate travel Web sites in development or provided by Alaska, Delta and Southwest airlines. Northwest, too, is "working on a managed travel product for accounts predisposed to booking a lot with us," said Al Lenza, Northwest vice president of distribution planning.

GetThere could leverage its share of airline Web site business--including America West, Northwest, TWA and United--to land the carriers' midmarket business site offerings through the new Mid-Market product.