Attendee management site SeeUthere Technologies has developed the capability to permit online attendee air bookings at the point of meeting registration and has partnered with online booker TRX Inc. to offer the service immediately. Though SeeUthere has not entered into agreements with any other online booking systems, company officials said their site has the ability to use any such supplier, which would be a first in the industry.
GetThere Inc. in August began offering attendee air booking at the point of event registration, but only if travel was booked through its DirectCorporate or parent company Sabre's BTS systems.
"Our strategy is to offer an open system of suppliers and let our customers know we have this service," said Helen Loh, vice president of marketing for Santa Clara, Calif.-based SeeUthere. "We're not specifically creating this with TRX. If our client has a different booking system, we can do that."
Allowing online air booking at the point of registration has been seen as a key application in the growth of the online meeting industry, as it enables corporate travel managers the same ability to direct travelers to preferred suppliers and compile travel data, as in online transient travel booking. SeeUthere's system, like GetThere's, also consolidates air travel data into a database to create integrated attendee itineraries for all meeting travel.
The key for SeeUthere is the potential for buyer choice. CEO John Chang said the technology is there, even if the agreements are not.
"We are up and running with TRX's booking system ResAssist," said SeeUthere's Chang. "We can integrate individual profiles with a corporate profile in ResAssist. To use any other booking system, it will take a month or two to integrate the technology."
This even will include GetThere DirectMeetings, Chang predicted. "Everything is driven by customers," he said. "If they say SeeUthere is better, and they want to integrate, GetThere will respond. It's a fact of life. Anyone who doesn't will lose market share. There's not a compelling difference between GetThere and any other booking system. GetThere just got there first, no pun intended. It's only a question of time before they respond."
GetThere DirectMeetings president Brian Ashton ruled out Chang's scenario. "There seems to be some confusion about the concept of integration," Ashton said. "We believe integration implies some cooperation between GetThere and SeeUthere, or any other meetings application. There is none and there will never be."
The move also gives Atlanta-based TRX Inc. entry into the attendee air booking market, as TRX Technology Solutions president Steve Reynolds predicted in August in an interview with Meetings Today. The company had no comment on the SeeUthere agreement, other than to confirm its existence and to state it is "open to working with other meetings technology partners that seek to link to ResAssist."
SeeUthere's pricing for the service is variable, particularly if the customer is not a TRX client. The site charges a transaction fee between $2 and $10, depending on booking volume and whether the client has an existing ResAssist license or would use SeeUthere's license. There may be an additional, variable fee if the client requests modifications to the standard integration implementation between SeeUthere and ResAssist.
"This leverages what corporations have already deployed," Chang said. "There are policies, profiles and discounts that are already in the systems and we can leverage that. Only GetThere and us can come close to doing it."