Rearden Adds Airport Parking Provider, Car Service, Event Tickets

Rearden Commerce late last month unveiled a partnership with The Park 'N Fly Network, a subsidiary of BCD Holdings, that allows Rearden clients to reserve airport parking at all of Park 'N Fly's 53 locations at 45 airports. The announcement is one of a wave of enhancements to the Rearden purchasing platform that also includes booking car services and leisure events.

Other travel vendors provide links though their Web sites to Park 'N Fly's airport reservations system, but the relationship with Rearden is the first time Park 'N Fly's reservation system has been integrated with corporate booking capabilities. David Grocer, senior vice president of marketing and sales, said Park 'N Fly would announce similar partnerships in the coming months.

"There will be others coming out, but Rearden is blazing the trail," Grocer said. Park 'N Fly for the past year has offered corporate online reservations through its homepage, giving travel managers access to savings as high as 50 percent off regular rates, Grocer said, but adoption always has presented a problem.

"We're excited about getting together with Rearden because of the challenge of adoption," Grocer said. "They proposed putting the Park 'N Fly Network into the employee's normal travel planning workflow and that would make it real simple and easy for travelers to reserve their airport parking. It was their goal of offering the full range of services to clients and our goal of gaining adoption for travel managers that made perfect sense to hook up."

Rearden said the new feature aims to ease travel planning, encourage savings and leverage negotiated rates by getting commitment from the traveler at the point of sale. "The communication and the decision is made during the booking process, and allows the travel manager to gain that savings at the point of planning, as opposed to hoping the traveler remembers where to go and what to do after the fact," Grocer said. "They're much more likely to make that commitment if they make that booking up front. When they get the confirmation, not only is it part of their itinerary, they also get an e-mail that has all the information."

Grocer said Atlanta-based Park 'N Fly decided to partner with Rearden since it was "starting with a clean slate" in approaching online purchasing. "They were developing from the ground up," he said. "They were launching this great solution and were designing it to plug in different services. Their strategy is around booking not only travel, but car service and dining. They were looking at an end-to-end service delivery management for corporations, so it made a lot of sense to go with them."

Following in the steps of such online booking tool providers as GetThere and Carlson Wagonlit Travel, Rearden late last month also announced it is providing customers access to car service through Ground Travel Technology Team, a technology platform that automates ground transportation, as well as sports and entertainment events through RazorGator, a global event ticketing company based in Los Angeles.

Much like its partnership with Park 'N Fly, Rearden users also can book car service and tickets for events within the same purchasing tool and workflow. Through its relationship with RazorGator, travel managers using Rearden's platform additionally can review, approve and capture entertainment expenses at the point of purchase. RazorGator claims all ticket purchases to sporting, concert and theater events are backed by a 100 percent delivery guarantee.

"Corporations spend more that $1 billion annually on event tickets for client entertainment, sales incentives and achievement awards—spending that until now has been essentially unmanaged," Tony D'Astolfo, vice president of travel services for Rearden, said. "RazorGator is a clear leader in bringing customers the best tickets to the world's most prestigious events, providing a huge resource for Rearden Commerce users and giving corporations an effective means for setting policies and tracking spend in this key area."