Tech Companies Continue Small-Midsize Flirtation
<B>Tech Companies Continue Small-Midsize Flirtation</B>
It wouldn't be a stretch to say that travel technology supply to the small to midsize corporate travel market is filling up quickly--that is, if that market were not so big and still so untapped.
But it is that big and the needs are different enough from the large market that just as the latter sees only a small handful of choices for, say, online booking, the announcements of new entrants for the smaller market keep streaming steadily.
One company walking the new entrant tightrope is Seattle-based Highwire. Born seven months ago, the firm is part-owned by Galileo International and used Galileo's XML Select structured data interface to build a reservations engine. Cofounder Marka Jenkins is president and CEO of Metropolitan Travel.
"As opposed to 'screen-scraping' technology, which forces an application to pick data from logical screens of existing formatting information, structured data returns well-defined, logical record blocks from the Galileo and Apollo GDSs that can be processed more efficiently," Highwire reported in a press release late last month. Highwire said in addition to the ability to plan, book and manage travel in "a new technology environment," it will offer fulfillment, support and "dynamic one-to-one marketing."
The last of these features indicates that, like other startups targeting the smaller markets--including T-Direct (<I>BTN</I>, March 20) and Yatra (<I>BTN</I>, May 15)--Highwire will attempt to offer added value to suppliers as well as buyers. The company already counts Amazon.com and Nordstrom as customers.
Clearly, one of the major challenges in selling to smaller and midsize accounts is finding them in the first place. One strategy is to partner with organizations that already have such relationships, which is one way Sabre BTS is reaching this scattered market.
BTS on May 30 announced it would provide its booking system to customers of ESoft Inc., a supplier of Internet connectivity to small and medium companies. The partners called the offering "one of the first end-to-end corporate travel solutions" for the market.
"Sabre and ESoft have extended their product and service offerings by combining forces to deliver services to one of the hottest areas in business travel today--the small to medium-size businesses," said Scott W. Smith, senior vice president and general manager for Sabre BTS. "Companies in this market are beginning to realize the need to better manage business travel expenditures."
Meanwhile, Concur last month said its Eworkplace.com procurement, travel management and travel booking outsource product for small and midsize companies added seven new customers, topping more than 120 altogether.