LEISURELINK, which provides timeshare and
vacation-rental inventory to GDSs and online agencies, closed on a
$5 million Series B funding round from Mission Ventures and
Clearstone Venture Partners. Kelly Tompkins, LeisureLinks founder
and chief strategist, said the funding will enable the Pasadena,
Calif., company to expand internationally and to recruit a
world-class management and engineering team.
TRAVELOCITY began powering Buy.coms travel
store. Selecting the Travel tab on the Buy.com shopping site, refers users to Travelocity.com
for travel research, shopping and booking. Under the agreement,
Travelocity will provide Buy.com consumers with a variety of travel
promotions.
SIDESTEP broadened its scope to include
searches for tours, attractions, event tickets and dining through a
partnership with destinations specialist Viator. But with the beta
underway of SideStep.coms Activities section, there isnt a lot of
metasearch activity going on. Most if not all of the inventory
comes through one supplier, Viator, although SideStep says it
plans to search some 20 Web sites by the time the Activities beta
is complete.
KAYAK.COM, armed with a $10 million budget,
signed on the Brooklyn Brothers ad agency to conduct an online and
offline marketing campaign, the metasearch Web sites first. The ad
blitz, tied to the summer travel season, will begin in June, Kayak
said.
ASTA AND
THE BUSINESS TRAVEL COALTION teamed up to create a working
group that will focus on prospective changes, and possible
upheavals, in the ways GDS services are packaged, priced and paid
for. The Travel Distribution Working Group, as the new entity is
known, will undertake educational and information-gathering efforts
to help prepare GDS users to make informed commercial decisions in
an uncertain environment. In addition, BTC Chairman Kevin Mitchell
said he believes that his constituency can influence evolving
relationships between the two sides. Mitchell said that at a time
when airlines seem bent on pursuing cost-cutting measures
detrimental to their most important customers, corporate travel
managers are in the best industry position to influence the outcome
because they can drive business.
Technology
Editor:
Dennis
Schaal
Phone: (201) 902-1904
[email protected]
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