Meetings Beat - 2000-04-24

By BTN / April 23, 2000

Meetings Beat

CO Reneges On Five-Day Zone Window
Continental Airlines has pushed back its minimum advance purchase requirement of group and meeting tickets using zone fares to seven days from five, so that it could fall in line with the rest of the major carriers, including partner Northwest Airlines. Continental had established the five-day requirement July 1, 1999, as a reaction to the lack of lead time corporate meeting buyers tend to have (Meetings Today, Aug. 2, 1999)

<A NAME="2">B-There Scores More Cash
Barely a day can go by, it seems, without news of a meeting industry dot-com raking in boatloads of venture capital, but attendee management Web site B-there.com's latest haul--$12 million--has made it one of the most successful money-raising sites in 2000, with a total of $22 million. The site will use the latest round of financing, led by Wayne, Pa.-based TL Ventures and Boston-based BancBoston Ventures, to support and promote its Internet-based, real-time event registration, housing and reservation system. "The venture capital community correctly recognizes that online event and attendee management is the future of the industry, and they also correctly have identified B-there.com as the leader in this field," said B-there.com chief executive officer and founder Peggy Lee. B-there is based in Westport, Conn.

<A NAME="3">BostonCoach Introduces Meeting Services
BostonCoach, the third-largest ground transportation supplier in the United States, has introduced a group travel services department to provide bus and limousine service for corporate meeting attendees. The department is split into three segments: shuttle services, which includes dedicated vehicles that will travel on fixed routes from corporations to conference facilities; charter services, which handles special events and conferences; and meeting services, which is geared to ad hoc meeting transportation. BostonCoach also will supply specialists and coordinators to work with corporate planners and drivers onsite during the event. "This service was a natural extension for BostonCoach, with the technology we already have in place," said BostonCoach president Russ Cooke.

<A NAME="4">Wyntrac Links to Hotel PMS
Housing and registration software supplier Wyntrac has hooked up with Denver-based Internet infrastructure software maker New Era Of Networks to allow planners and attendees access to hotels' property management systems. The Wyntrac software will allow meeting planners to adjust attendee reservations, cancellations and arrival and departure times, all of which should help to control room-block attrition. Attendees will receive instant confirmation of changes. "I can't stress enough how much this alliance will mean to our industry," said Plano, Texas-based Wyntrac's executive president, Michael Foster. Direct, two-way communication between a hotel's property management system and the event organizer will greatly reduce human errors." Wyntrac still is finalizing a list of hotels, resorts and conference centers to be part of the pilot program deploying the software, company officials said.

<A NAME="5">Online Third Party SmartRFP Dies
SmartRFP, the Web-based third party that was designed to find meeting sites through the Internet and also negotiate subsequent contracts (Meetings Today, Feb. 22, 1999), is no more. While traffic was growing at the site, its owners--Berkeley, Calif.-based meetings technology firm Cardinal Communications--weren't able to keep a management structure in place to continue its growth, and preferred to give more attention to other Cardinal products, said vice president Rod Marymor. Weep not for Cardinal, though. Its RegWeb online attendee registration is growing "exponentially" he said.

<A NAME="6">WebEx Files for IPO
San Jose, Calif.-based meeting Webcaster WebEx Inc. has filed for an initial public offering on the NASDAQ exchange underwritten by Goldman, Sachs and Co. and Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown. At press time, the offering had not been priced.

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