SAM KATZ, who heads
Cendants travel distribution business, said Orbitz could one day
become the spun-off business global retail brand. We certainly have
that aspiration, but we dont have that plan in the drawer, said
Katz in delivering a speech at the recent PhoCusWright Executive
Conference in Orlando. Cendant already has transitioned Travelport, Cheap
Tickets and Lodging.com to the Orbitz technology platform, with
international holdings like Gullivers Travel Associates and ebookers next in
the pipeline. Katz said Galileo gives the distribution business a
global footprint and its cash flow enables Cendant to reinvest in
the business. But, would the standalone distribution business be
under pressure if the new-entrant GDSs gain traction? Katz said the
companys consumer businesses provide a hedge. They create a
separate, growing earnings stream that mitigates against any
challenges in the GDS business, Katz said.
CENDANT,
meanwhile, will power the revamped American Airlines corporate
booking solution, CorporateAAccess.com. With testing in the fourth
quarter and a rollout scheduled for the first half of next year,
the portal will feature privately negotiated fares and rates from
American, American Eagle and AmericanConnection; hotel stays; and
car rentals. It also will enable business travelers to book
publicly available fares from other airlines, hotels and car rental
companies. The current incarnation of CorporateAAccess, powered by
Navitaire, offers Americans domestic itineraries and does not
facilitate the bookings of publicly available fares from other
airlines. The relaunched portal will enable corporate travel
managers to access real-time traveler data and improved reporting
that supports easy integration into existing back-office systems,
American stated. This is the second recent corporate portal deal
for Cendant. In October, United introduced a corporate portal
powered by Cendant which was based on Orbitz technology.
MARRIOTT
INTERNATIONAL, HILTON HOTELS AND HILTON INTERNATIONAL
separately reached distribution agreements with several online
distributors. Under one of the agreements, Orbitz will establish a
direct connection with the Marriott res system to offer merchant
inventory and rates to consumers booking individual room stays.
Previously, Orbitz accessed Marriott merchant inventory for
vacation packages but used Priceline-owned Travelweb for room stays
that werent bundled into packages. In another Cendant deal, Hilton
Hotels added Orbitz, Cheap Tickets and Lodging.com to its lineup of
accredited distributors and will begin providing rooms on a
merchant basis. Previously, Orbitz got that inventory through
Travelweb. Hilton Hotels accreditation of the Cendant online
agencies leaves Travelocity as the only one of the big three online
agencies without Hilton Hotels nod of approval. In other
developments, Hilton International, the U.K.-headquartered division
of the Hilton Group, reached its first distribution agreement with
a travel search engine. Hilton International, which operates 263
Hilton-branded hotels outside the U.S. and 139 Scandic-branded
properties, agreed to allow SideStep to establish a direct
connection to the Hilton International Web site at www.hilton.co.uk.
Hilton International said it launched a new availability engine to
accommodate search engines like SideStep. With the new technology and direct
connection, SideStep can access Hilton International room and rate
information without scraping the chains Web site and overloading it
with unproductive traffic.
YAHOO
took new steps to give its FareChase comparative shopping engine
greater prominence within its travel offerings, putting a FareChase tab on
the Yahoo Travel homepage for the first time. Yahoos decision to
tighten the integration of FareChase into the Yahoo Travel
homepage, Yahoo Travel Guides and Yahoo Shopping came
after Travelocity and Yahoo renegotiated their contract in July.
Travelocity is still the exclusive booking engine for air, car and
hotel reservations on Yahoo Travel, and the agreement was extended
one year, until Dec. 31, 2006. In addition to new financial
provisions, the revised agreement indicates that Travelocity wont
participate in FareChase and Allow(s) Yahoo to continue and expand
in the travel search arena throughout the Yahoo Network,
Travelocity stated in an SEC filing. Yahoo maintains it always had
the right to expand into meta-search. And, in another development,
Orbitz began participating in FareChase through an agreement with
Cendant that also includes Cendants hotel brands. In a turnaround
for FareChase, meanwhile, the Yahoo meta-search player began
searching the American Airlines Web site, AA.com, for schedules and
fares, through a direct-connect using XML technology. FareChases
access to AA.com started Nov. 14 despite the fact that American
sued FareChase for unauthorized scraping in 2003 before Yahoo
acquired FareChase. The two parties settled that litigation prior
to Yahoos purchase of FareChase in 2004.
CHOICE
HOTELS decided to make its group rates available to
consumers and group leaders through Groople.com, the group
travel booking site. Other participating chains on Groople include
Best Western, La Quinta, and the Cendant brands. Groople said it
works with some 60,000 properties worldwide.