Rosenbluth Tech Vet Moves To Meetings At McGettigan

<B>Rosenbluth Tech Vet Moves To Meetings At McGettigan</B>

By Chris Davis

Danamichele Brennen, formerly Rosenbluth International's vice president and chief travel scientist, has jumped to meeting strategy firm McGettigan Partners, where she'll help to develop new technology solutions for clients' meeting travel management.

Brennen, who will serve as McGettigan's CTO, is critical of the manner in which technology for corporate transient travel--her primary focus while at Rosenbluth--has developed. "In corporate vertical, there's an awful lot of attention paid--in my mind, far too much--to the transaction itself," Brennen said. "That has been driven by the Internet startups attacking the easiest area of any kind of travel management, that being the simple transaction. The supply side has fueled the buyers' side into thinking about that. Except for sophisticated intermediaries, a lot have been swept away into this craziness over the least interesting part of the business. Startups are fueled and have the money to get everyone hyped up by that. There is far more value to be added than just a simple transaction."

Brennen doesn't see the save phenomenon in the corporate meetings industry. In her view, that segment only now is beginning to seek technological solutions that relate to group travel, which gives her new company an opportunity to create solutions that meet their needs.

"The meetings vertical is tremendously interesting," Brennen said. "Being in the corporate travel vertical for almost 10 years, you realize there's a lot of similarities as to where technology can take this industry. What companies are starting to think about doing with meetings is just about ready to go into hyper-speed, which is why we spend a lot of time talking about technology these days and its strategic application."

Though there are online meeting solutions offered in the industry that have drawn interest, none have taken the industry by the reins, including McGettigan's spinoff meeting portal StarCite.

"There isn't one technological solution that can meet all the needs of the clients in this vertical," said McGettigan CEO Mimi McGettigan. "StarCite is a piece of that solution and we use it with our customers."

Brennen doesn't see current meetings technology products grasping the industry as have online transient booking tools. "Despite the presence the Internet plays, there still is a lot of room and there isn't the same group-think effect that exists on the transient side," she said.

Neither Brennen nor McGettigan chose to share what specific types of projects Brennen, who began in her new position in September, would develop. McGettigan, though, said new products should hit the market next year, though she declined to say whether they would work in conjunction with, or replace, the company's signature Core Discovery meetings consolidation software.

"We'll be working on and putting forth a McGettigan solution to take the next generation of technology to a level that doesn't exist today," McGettigan said. "These solutions do not exist today in a comprehensive way, quite frankly. We wanted someone who was leading edge. With her expertise and experience and our position in the marketplace, it's a very good match."

McGettigan and Rosenbluth, both with headquarters in Philadelphia, once shared a joint venture, Synergys, that since has dissolved.