N.Y. Agency Joins Mega TMCs In Intranet Offerings

Stevens Travel, a New York-based agency that reported $50 million in 2001 Airlines Reporting Corp. volume, is working with clients to put the finishing touches on a new travel portal that can be customized by corporate users regardless of their agency of record. Portals2TheWorld offers "an encyclopedia of travel where you can see, surf, analyze and buy without leaving the site," said president Harold Stevens.

Under development for "a number of years," the portal was described by Stevens client Winnie Romanoff of New York-based CE Unterberg Towbin as an "amazing" employee perk. "It shows you're looking at travelers' needs," she said. "The travel planners become heroes, and you are making their lives easier by using one tool."

The product features hundreds of links to information on destinations, airlines, special needs travel, travel-related shopping, passports and visas, currency, mobile phone rentals and VAT reclaim, among dozens of other categories including leisure travel products.

The site can be branded and allows corporate buyers to customize messages for their travelers as well as track their usage. Stevens, which expects to sell the tool mainly to small and midsize accounts, is joining such heavyweights as Atlanta-based WorldTravel BTI in offering a comprehensive intranet travel solution.

WorldTravel Interactive, a division of Atlanta-based WorldTravel BTI, now has 45 clients using its WorldTravelNet intranet product. According to WorldTravel Interactive senior vice president and general manager Bill Niejadlik, it is "pretty much the only mega travel portal left that's completely travel tool- and agency-independent. You can change your booking engine and your agency and everything else, but you can keep the portal."

WorldTravelNet also integrates multiple profile tools, expense management products and is available in French and German. Other features include real-time flight information, weather, dynamic mapping, driving directions and active itineraries. Clients include such corporations as BP Amoco and PricewaterhouseCoopers.

Basic customization and automatic updates are covered as part of standard implementation costs and monthly fees based on air spend. While many companies rely on internal departments to develop travel pages, Niejadlik said such work can be expensive. "One client's IT department charged the same per month for a page that redirects users to WorldTravelNet as we charged for our whole product," he half-joked.

According to marketing documents shared by TQ3 Maritz Travel Solutions, "Most companies' IT departments are short on resources for building and maintaining a travel Web site, and they do not know travel. We do highly recommend, however, that the client's IT department be included in the sales process." Fees for the TQ3 Business Travel Portal are charged monthly.

Carlson Wagonlit Travel charges annually based on travel volume for its CWT Connect portal product, said global product manager Brian Hace. Navigant director of Web application development Claudia Myers said the agency typically charges a set fee without a maintenance charge. According to a spokesperson, American Express generally designs client travel pages around such online booking tools as its Corporate Travel Online. A GetThere official said it offers similar content.

"Early intranets were just a page of links," said CWT's Hace, "but soon they will push out information that is more meaningful based on who the user is."