GetThere, Others Shake Up E-Commerce Management
<B>GetThere, Others Shake Up E-Commerce Management</B>
By Jay Campbell
Jeff Palmer will head GetThere's corporate business line after the departure of Sabre's Scott Smith, who has resigned to take a CEO position with Timera, the Dallas/Ft. Worth-based technology spinoff of Union Pacific Corp.
Most recently senior vice president and general manager of the corporate market at Sabre's GetThere subsidiary, Smith is leaving just after a shakeup at GetThere in which several key executives left (BTN, Oct. 30).
In an interview earlier this month with BTN, Smith said, "It has nothing to do with any issues or power struggles of any sort." He said GetThere is "going to do great," and that the company is "through the worst part of the integration" in terms of personnel issues and the rationalization of product plants.
Smith said Timera is "sort of the Sabre story, where they've spun off of Union Pacific's tech assets and are automating their industry and starting to look beyond at others." In particular, the venture focuses on labor management and union contract automation. Smith will be responsible for expanding Timera's customer base beyond the railroad and transportation industry.
A Sabre employee since 1982, Smith led the growth of the Sabre BTS product after 1997. Previously, he was a managing director of national accounts for Sabre Travel Information Network. Prior to that, Smith was managing director of market planning for North America, Asia/Pacific and Latin America market strategies, product selection and joint venture agreements. Smith also served in a variety of sales positions, including western division sales manager, area sales manager in San Diego and field communications representative in Los Angeles.
Perhaps owing to travel's relatively early experimentation with and adoption of e-commerce, Smith is far from the first executive of his kind to leave the core of the industry.
Distribution managers at Continental, US Airways, United and elsewhere--who led the development of Web sites and e-ticketing--have left those airlines over the past year and a half to bring their e-commerce expertise elsewhere, though some still work with the travel industry.
Most recently, America West's head of distribution, Bill Spilman, joined EDS in the first week of October. He now is charged with product marketing for the transportation industry.
In the online booking arena, not only have most of the original senior managers at GetThere recently gone elsewhere, so has E-Travel founder John Ackermann (BTN, Oct. 30).
Worldspan, too, has a relatively new leader for its Trip Manager system in Michael Mabrouk, now director of e-commerce corporate sales.
Also, XTRA On-Line last month introduced Tim Christman as its staff vice president of sales and John Bryant as director of strategic sales and distribution.
GetThere's Palmer will assume Smith's duties on the corporate side, while Smith said "a player to be named later, likely someone from the Sabre organization," will run GetThere's products for airlines and other suppliers. Both report to GetThere president Gadi Maier.
Previously senior vice president of marketing for the corporate line of business at GetThere, Palmer has 20 years of high-tech strategy and marketing experience, with such companies as BBN Corp., Domain Solutions Corp., Memco Software and TriStrata Inc.
In a recent interview, Palmer described his vision of pricing for Web-based travel bookings: "I see two-tiered pricing where the more the low price goes down, the more the higher one goes up," he said. "I believe it will be a four or five to one ratio, and on the high end, you have complicated, often leisure itineraries.