THE DISPUTE
BETWEEN NORTHWEST and much of the travel industry over the
airlines proposed shared GDS fee started with a bang in summer
2004, triggering weeks of headlines and controversy, and ended
without even a whimper on Feb. 15 at 2:50 p.m. in U.S. Bankruptcy
Court Southern District of New York in Manhattan. Judge Allan
Gropper approved a settlement between Northwest and Sabre related
to their litigation over the airlines now-withdrawn shared GDS fee
and the retaliatory actions, including downgrading the airlines
displays, that Sabre took. The judge also authorized Northwest and
Sabre to enter into a five-year GDS participation accord, clearing
the way for its implementation. The terms of the settlement and the
participation agreement are under seal. There was no opposition to
Northwests motion.
SABRE enhanced its ability to provide
travel agencies with end-to-end solutions with its acquisition of
Trams, but the end game, too, is to increase Sabres marketshare in
North America. Los Angeles-based Trams, with its 80 employees,
provides back-office accounting and midoffice
reservations-processing and marketing products to about 11,000
agency locations, largely in the U.S. Trams will be operated as a
stand-alone company under the Sabre Holdings umbrella. Sabre
already is the top GDS in North America market share. And it hopes
its purchase of Trams can help Sabre improve on what it says was a
45% share of air bookings in North America in 2005. Sabre had a
licensing deal with Trams, and many Sabre subscribers already use
Trams products. But many Trams users subscribe to Apollo, Amadeus
and Worldspan. Obviously, one of the things we are anticipating is
that over time we will convince not only existing Sabre customers
to remain strong partners with Sabre but also to encourage other
[Trams] customers to do the same, said Chris Kroeger, senior vice
president, North America, for the Sabre Travel Network. He added
that Trams will have non-Sabre GDS customers, but that is
OK.
CENDANT AND
YAHOO took new steps to tighten their relationship, with
Cendants CheapTickets and the Neat Group becoming the exclusive
providers for cruises and vacation packages, respectively, on Yahoo Travel.
Previously, NLG was Yahoo Travels cruise and vacation package
provider. The distribution agreement involving the Consumer Travel
Americas unit of Cendant Travel Distribution Services was
implemented Jan. 25 but publicized Feb. 21. CheapTickets provides
customer care for cruises, and the Neat Group handles vacation
packages on Yahoo Travel, and the two Cendant companies also will
perform telesales functions, a Cendant spokesman said. Travelocity,
meanwhile, remains the air, car and hotel provider for Yahoo
Travel. Cendant and Yahoo already were cooperating on several
fronts. Cendants Orbitz features the My Yahoo RSS reader for consumers
seeking updates on Orbitz price changes and deals. And several
Cendant brands, including Orbitz, last year began participating in
Yahoos metasearch offering, FareChase.
ENTERPRISE extended its participation in
Expedias Preferred Rental Car Program for two years, the companies
said. The agreement gives Enterprise wider exposure on Expedia.com, Expedia.ca and Expedia Corporate
Travel; provides for pricing parity with rates on Enterprise
and third-party Web sites; and guarantees customer-service
benchmarks.
SMARTSHOPPER, a New York-headquartered
technology company with an R&D unit in Tel Aviv, unveiled a
downloadable comparison-shopping tool that searches both nontravel
retail and travel Web sites. SmartShopper is in some respects
similar ways to SideSteps downloadable tool, although SideSteps
realm is solely travel. So, for example, when a user searches Travelocity
for a flight, SmartShopper runs a parallel search in another window
and retrieves flights from its supplier partners. Partners include
several Cendant businesses (including Orbitz, Lodging.com, Octopus
Travel, eBookers, HotelClub.com and RatesToGo.com) as well as Despegar,
TravelFusion and Advantage Rent-A-Car. SmartShopper also performs
comparison searches for nontravel retail products.