JetBlue Eyes Early '04 For Corp. Portal Launch
JetBlue Airways expects its corporate online booking tool to be ready in the first quarter of 2004 with basic booking and tracking capabilities. Director of sales Noreen Courtney added that the product, to be linked to JetBlue's Web site, also will be used to maintain lines of communication with corporate accounts. "Many of the online booking tools out there now can't book JetBlue because we may not be in the global distribution system to which that tool is connected," she explained. JetBlue participates only in Sabre and only on a basic, instant-purchase level. Additional functionality, including car and hotel bookings, will be evaluated after launch.
Amadeus Seeks To Tweak GDS Pricing Model
When it announces its 2004 fees later this month, Amadeus Global Travel Distribution will rework the pricing model and is considering charging airlines for bookings on the basis of a percentage of the fare rather than a flat segment fee, a spokesperson said. Another possibility is to charge airlines a higher fee in countries where they have a weaker presence. Amadeus recently said it sees Galileo's and Sabre's discounts-for-content programs as "short-term solutions."
Visa U.S.A. Suffers Loss, Seeks Bank Aid
Visa U.S.A. posted an operating loss of $1.4 billion in its latest fiscal year, and the bank-owned organization turned to its members for cash. The Wall Street Journal last week reported that Visa bankcard issuers Bank One, Wells Fargo and Bank of America, among others, are paying membership fees early to help recover Visa's shortage. The not-for-profit network has attributed the loss to a lawsuit settlement with retailers over debit card fees, through which Visa this year paid such merchants as Wal-Mart an aggregate $2 billion. Meanwhile, Visa International last week appointed Aliza Knox senior vice president of Visa commercial solutions. Knox joined Visa in 2002 to manage product development and business strategies and will focus on expanding Visa's global corporate solutions, which the network stated are "issued and locally supported in over 50 countries and territories."
U.S. Carriers Continue Developing Partnerships
United Airlines and Air China late last month began code sharing on various routes across the Pacific and beyond their respective hubs. Delta Air Lines next month will expand codeshare cooperation with SkyTeam partner Korean Airlines and on May 1 will launch new Cincinnati-Amsterdam flights. Amsterdam is home to KLM Royal Dutch Airlines, a carrier likely to join Delta's SkyTeam alliance. Delta this weekend also began sharing codes with domestic partner Continental Airlines on flights between Atlanta and Santiago, Chile. Continental, meanwhile, in February will begin sharing codes with Danish carrier Maersk Air, pending government approval. Northwest Airlines last week began offering Internet and airport kiosk checkin for travelers whose itineraries include six of Northwest's alliance partners. Meanwhile, American Airlines CEO Gerard Arpey said, "The early results of the codeshare with British Airways are encouraging." He added that he is "hopeful" in getting Japan Airlines to join the Oneworld alliance.
Indicators Support Optimistic Hotel Market Overview
According to the latest analysis by Lodging Econometrics, a Portsmouth, N.H.-based consulting firm that tracks the development pipeline, 40-year-low interest rates, combined with strong gross domestic productivity growth, augur well for a resumption of new hotel construction in the next year or two. Lodging Econometrics projected that the upswing will begin first at the midprice and upscale price points, particularly for properties in the 75-room to 200-room range. Through the third quarter of the year, the pipeline had slowed to historic levels.
InterActiveCorp Crowding Out Competitors
Hotel company executives have bemoaned how quickly third-party merchant model Internet sites have succeeded in creating brand names for their products. By contrast, it's taken decades for such names as Hilton, Marriott and Sheraton to become well known—and instantly recognizable—to consumers. Expect the onslaught to continue. Analyst Paul Keung, who tracks the online travel marketplace for CIBC World Markets, last week estimated that InterActiveCorp, parent of Expedia, Hotels.com, Hotwire and others will spend more than $500 million in sales and marketing, which is more than the combined budgets of competitors Orbitz, Travelweb, Priceline, Travelocity and Navigant.