Cendant Travel Distribution Services today announced a new agreement with partners Lufthansa and Austrian airlines that provides users of its Orbitz for Business and Travelport corporate travel platforms with discounted airfares. The deal is the latest in a string of agreements between travel suppliers and online corporate travel management companies, following several announcements in the past 18 months from Sabre's Travelocity Business, Expedia Corporate Travel and Cendant TDS.
Effective this month, the new Cendant-Lufthansa/Austrian deal covers flights originating in the United States. Lufthansa operates transatlantic flights from 17 U.S. cities while Austrian flies from New York JFK and Washington Dulles. Discounted fares are "delivered directly and seamlessly online to all U.S.-based corporate customers using either Orbitz for Business or Travelport, including larger companies who may not have an existing agreement with Lufthansa," Cendant said.
Noting a "diverse portfolio" of companies using services offered by both platforms, "we are able to negotiate and deliver discounted fares with leading suppliers," said Dean Sivley, chief product and marketing officer for Orbitz for Business and Travelport.
Cendant TDS previously signed discount fare agreements with Alitalia, Frontier and Singapore airlines
(BTNonline, April 8).
Brian Murphy, Cendant TDS director of supplier relations, said Orbitz for Business also is beginning to flag on its site hotel properties that offer amenities favored by business travelers, including in-room Internet access, onsite restaurants, fitness facilities and business centers.
Murphy said roughly 3,400 properties from several hotel companies--including Starwood, Hilton, Best Western and Kimpton--are participating in the Board Room Rates program. Cendant's own hotel group, which owns the Amerihost Inn, Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Knights Inn, Ramada, Super 8, Travelodge and Wingate Inn franchises, is not yet on board.
Meanwhile, Expedia Corporate Travel in the past few months established preferential deals with Alitalia, Virgin Atlantic and rental car firms Hertz and Enterprise. It also recently enabled its customers to interface with Southwest Airlines' Swabiz corporate portal
(BTN, June 20).
For its part, Sabre's Travelocity Business last year announced deals with Aeromexico, Frontier, Japan Airlines, Lufthansa, Qantas and Spirit airlines, as well as hotel companies Best Western and Utell and car rental firms Avis and Hertz
(BTNonline, Aug. 30, 2004).
Other corporate travel management entities also continue building relationships with travel suppliers. Outtask, for example, last week said users of its Cliqbook corporate booking tool would benefit from a recently activated direct connection with JetBlue Airways. Cliqbook users previously could view JetBlue's fares and link to the carrier's CompanyBlue corporate booking portal but available inventory now is fully integrated into the booking tool display.