I:FAO Takes XOL's PowerTrip

<B>I:FAO Takes XOL's PowerTrip</B>

By Jay Campbell

<I>Frankfurt - </I>Online booking and data consolidation vendor I:FAO last month acquired the intellectual property rights and operations center for Dallas-based Xtra On-Line's PowerTrip booking system. I:FAO on July 1 took over customer support for all PowerTrip customers.

While boosting the market position of I:FAO North America, the acquisition offers new resources for PowerTrip corporate clients who, in recent months, Xtra On-Line had left behind to make room for the development of other technologies.

"I:FAO gains a bigger foothold in the United States and XOL loses some significant debt and the responsibility of distributing and supporting products directly to the end corporate and agency customer," said Norm Rose, president of Belmont, Calif.-based TravelTechnology.com.

XOL now considers itself a vendor to the vendors, with a staff of less than 20 and two main products: the MyTrip calendar interface and the XML Transaction Server. Its former PowerTrip division, now under I:FAO, will be "operationally positive" by the fourth quarter, thanks to synergies with its new parent company, I:FAO said.

Worldspan's 25 percent ownership of XOL remains unchanged, as does its seat on the company's board, but XOL CEO Bill Diffenderffer left the company to pursue undisclosed interests. Former chief technology officer Mark McCulloch was elevated to CEO. A little more than a dozen XOL employees were transferred to I:FAO.

"The reason this happened is obviously that XOL had an ongoing issue about what business it wants to be in and its ability to fund that ongoing business," said Bill McFarlane, I:FAO head of business development and strategy. "It was an undervalued asset and a good list of customers, as well as a good employee base that will add to our U.S. position."

According to the German version of I:FAO's announcement, "Xtra On-Line is, because of the parallel development of another, separate, software, under financial pressure." But XOL vice president of marketing and business development Chris Bradshaw said she wouldn't put it that way: "We felt we were veering away from providing customer service and support because when we had to choose between fixing a bug and using the same resource in developing new technology, we wanted to allocate our budget to developing new technology."

Because of that shift in support, I:FAO believes it will make PowerTrip customers welcome the acquisition. "To PowerTrip customers, this should be relatively transparent," said McFarlane. "We're not planning on making any radical or knee-jerk changes. The goal is to migrate these customers to our product, Cytric, but we're not in the business of forcing anyone. We will continue to operate PowerTrip as it is for at least 12 months and perhaps longer."

While PowerTrip works on Apollo and Sabre, I:FAO said Cytric can connect to all global distribution systems, including Abacus in Asia. As part of the deal, I:FAO licensed PowerTrip back to XOL and XOL licensed MyTrip to I:FAO. Bradshaw said MyTrip clients include Oak Brook, Ill.-based OAG Worldwide, a top-five airline and Starwood Hotels. Worldspan also has shown some informal interest.

The product, which allows travelers to book trips through such personal information managers as Microsoft Outlook and Lotus Notes (BTN, July 31), has been trumpeted repeatedly by industry veteran Rolfe Shellenberger of Palm Desert, Calif.-based Runzheimer International. "Xtra On-Line is still the only online application that has dealt directly with the urgent need for a single-screen response," Shellenberger said recently. "Without such a feature, all online transactions that involve lodging will cost corporate customers more in time expense than a phone call to a counselor, and that method has been clearly discounted as overly costly."

OAG licenses both PowerTrip and MyTrip for use in its own booking tools. According to its publishing general manager for enterprise products Tracy Lafferty, OAG "had initial discussions, and understands that there's not going to be any change in terms of service we can offer clients for the remainder of their contracts. All services remain intact. We see the acquisition as a positive, because XOL had been in flux and that was impacting its resources to fix bugs." Still, Lafferty said, "We're hoping to have discussions with the XOL folks to understand the MyTrip part a bit better."

In other news related to I:FAO, the company said it will be opening a new operations center for Cytric in Scottsdale, Ariz. The company also in late June announced an agreement to have German corporate card vendor Dresdner Bank resell the I:FAO system to its more than 165,000 corporate clients.