Priceline.com launched a group booking
service for 10 hotel rooms or more at www.findgroupdeals.com, a URL that Priceline owns, and
the service comes with a lowest group-rates guarantee.
Priceline.com is
introducing the service on FindGroupDeals.com in partnership with
Lexyl Travel Technologies, a San Diego company that provides online
booking services for groups.
FindGroupDeals.com
provides a negotiating venue for group hotel shoppers and sellers,
but Priceline.com and its FindGroupDeals.com are not parties to the
transaction. The parties are the group bookers and the
hotels.
FindGroupDeals.com
pledges to pay for a coordinator's room if it can't meet or beat a
competitor's price for comparable rooms when booking 10 rooms or
more per night.
Priceline.com
stated that users can book 10 to 1,000 rooms on FindGroupDeals.com.
Users enter their dates and destination and "participating hotels
then respond with competing rate quotes." Priceline claims that
hotels respond "within seconds," bidding for the group's
business.
Another feature of
the service is that it enables groups making bookings to create
event Web sites to provide registration forms and information for
group members.
Separately,
Priceline.com users can now bid or book published rates for up to
nine rooms. The previous maximum was four rooms.
To contact reporter
Dennis Schaal, send e-mail to [email protected].