GetThere Purchases AllMeetings.com

<B>GetThere Purchases AllMeetings.com</B>

By Chris Davis

Highlighting the rapid convergence of the online meeting management and booking sectors of the industry, GetThere Inc. has purchased meeting portal AllMeetings.com for about $25 million in cash and stock, promising corporate travel buyers a complete set of meeting and travel management tools from a single entity.

GetThere is offering the AllMeetings' solutions to its corporate clients, several of whom expressed interest to BTN. AllMeetings provides a proprietary tool that selects cost-effective hotels and destinations based on the departure points of meeting attendees.

AllMeetings, founded early last year, will operate as a wholly owned division of GetThere. The portal's co-founders, Glenn Bingham and Brian Ashton, signed deals to stay on with the booking system for three years.

The acquisition--the third major alliance between meeting portals and booking systems this year, but the first outright purchase--eventually will integrate all of AllMeetings' meeting management tools into GetThere's Web site. Currently, the sites offer links to each other.

"There's lots of pent-up corporate demand for a complete solution across the entire spectrum of travel and meeting management," said Jeff Palmer, GetThere vice president of strategic development. "This will make it easier to source and select meeting sites, register attendees and bring better management and economic savings to overall travel costs through better reporting of meeting spending." Palmer said the deal also offers direct connections to meeting suppliers through the GetThere Supplier Network (BTN, June 12).

Several GetThere clients applauded the deal and said they plan to examine the potential benefits AllMeetings could bring to their program. Carolyn Davis, director of travel and meeting management firm DRS3, said a primary reason she chose GetThere as the booking solution for her client, Champion International, was because of its intention to develop or acquire a meeting management solution.

"Meetings was one of the top considerations in choosing an online booking product, in terms of how it could help our consolidation, registration and reporting processes," Davis said. "GetThere seemed to be the most progressive in that field. In the selection process, we sat down with them and brainstormed for a significant amount of time about meetings. We were never privy to what it was going to look like, but they were aware of our needs and were in the process of addressing it. This is the direction we wanted to go."

Davis is comfortable with the fact that the meeting solution discussed with GetThere is AllMeetings. She expects to realize the greatest benefits through better meeting expenditure reports and, consequently, improved negotiations. "This facilitates that whole process with hard data," Davis said. "The reporting piece is key as it allows travel managers and internal meeting sponsors to judge the value of their meetings, but a lot of corporations don't have a handle on it."

Other travel buyers and GetThere clients, who never discussed the possibilities for meeting management solutions through the booking system, were intrigued by the acquisition.

"We didn't make any requests of GetThere for meeting services because, just two months ago, we combined our meeting and travel programs," said Michelle Lee, head of global travel and corporate events for Credit Suisse First Boston. "The acquisition is a good concept. We didn't push for it, but we consider it a priority to look at what this move can bring."

Linda Watson, travel manager for Hewitt Associates, agreed: "We've never requested meeting planning services from GetThere because we handle all of it through in-house planners," she said. "But now that they've moved in that direction, that would definitely be something we'd look at. We haven't done so yet, but we will review it."

Bingham, who serves as AllMeetings' president, said the integrated solutions offered by the convergence of online booking systems and portals will persuade more corporations to look to the Internet for their meetings needs. "I think the reason why the industry isn't moving as fast as the meetings types would like is that a lot of corporations are waiting to see what would shake out in terms of companies, partnerships and products," he said. "Now they can see that this is an integrated, shaken-out solution, rather than a few companies with marketing partnerships."

The outright acquisition of AllMeetings bucks a trend prevalent during the growth of the online meeting management industry of partnering with several vendors, instead of forming exclusive alliances (Meetings Today, July 10). The meeting portals have formed several nonexclusive alliances with many vendors, including portal StarCite's partnership with booking system E-Travel.

E-Travel executives criticized GetThere for offering the portal as the only choice for GetThere clients: "Our customers gave us feedback that they didn't feel AllMeetings has capabilities as strong as StarCite. One of its big holes is the inability to accurately budget and capture meeting spend," said Matt Hausmann, E-Travel's director of partner programs. "They also don't want E-Travel to tell them what meeting product they'll use. They hammered home the point that the best way to go is to keep the ability to work with all the different products."

The decision to acquire, rather than partner with, AllMeetings was to maintain direction over all of GetThere's offerings, Palmer said. "We felt that the overlap was strong between what we do for transient travel and what was demanded for meetings, but to do it right we had to have control over the solution," Palmer said.

Bingham said AllMeetings was looking for investors as well as partners when discussions with GetThere began, and discussions evolved to the prospect of a single, comprehensive solution. "This was an opportunity for us to provide this," he said. "A problem with partnering is that you have different customer service offerings, different companies, contracts, hassles, etc. We wanted to bring it all under one roof."

As for AllMeetings' capabilities, "we see them as the best all around fit across several dimensions--their management and employees, technology, the ability to work well with us in a closely coupled environment and their relationships with corporate buyers and suppliers," Palmer said. "We could greatly accelerate their capability in the market by introducing them immediately to our corporate base, most of which are asking for this capability. We could complement their abilities with our ability to book online."

Ed Sarraille, president and CEO of meeting portal EventSource.com, said a merger was not an option when his company inaugurated the spate of alliances between online bookers and portals by partnering with Sabre Business Travel Services (Meetings Today, May 15).

"We had just raised $20 million in investment capital, so acquisition wasn't ever in the cards," Sarraille said. "But AllMeetings will be a real benefit to GetThere, as we will be to Sabre BTS. Considering the relatively small number of meetings that are planned on the Internet, and the increase in that number additional exposure will bring, you can see the opportunity for all of us."

The final cost of the acquisition will hinge on GetThere's stock price at the time of the deal's close, expected shortly. At press time, the stock was hovering between $10 and $11 per share. AllMeetings will maintain its suburban Las Vegas headquarters.