BELLEVUE, Wash. --
Expedia Corporate Travel (ECT) plans to launch a Canadian platform
in January and recently became the first corporate agency to get
permission from Southwest to give clients a booking link to Swabiz.com.
Cheryl Rosner, the
former Hotels.com executive who recently became president of
Expedias Corporate Travel Group, spoke about these initiatives last
week, a day after IAC/InterActiveCorp successfully spun off its
travel businesses into the newly formed Expedia Inc.
Rosner downplayed
the immediate impact of the spin-off on ECT but acknowledged that
at the end of the day, everything is on the table.
The Canadian
platform, she said, builds on ECTs international client base in the
U. K. and France and is part of its drive to bring the companys
corporate offering to worldwide prominence.
ECT has some 3,000
clients, including 2,000 in the U.S. As of April, 16 of the clients
were Fortune 500 companies.
Rosner said the
offering for clients in Canada will be a complete solution with
online and offline components.
In June, ECT quietly
began giving clients the ability to book Southwest when they
perform searches on city pairs that the airline flies.
Clients then get a
link to Southwests corporate booking site, Swabiz.com. These
bookings are captured by ECTs reporting tools.
A Southwest
spokeswoman acknowledged that we are very conservative about these
types of relationships, adding that ECT and Booking Builder are the
only third-party tools with authorized access to link to
Southwest.
Corporate travel
managers are looking for a one-window environment, and this gets
them closer, the Southwest spokeswoman said.
The Swabiz-ECT link
fits in with Southwests distribution and business model, the
spokeswoman noted, because Southwest retains control of the
customer while giving ECT reporting capabilities for travel
managers.
Regarding other
initiatives, Rosner said that in September, ECT will roll out a
feature called 3D Fare Display, which gives clients the ability to
view availabilities and pricing for other fare options on flights
that they have already booked.
For example, they
can compare pricing on refundable and nonrefundable fare
classes.
Meanwhile, with the
spin-off just accomplished, Rosner said she is focusing on how ECT
will expand globally, increasing value to suppliers and leveraging
the best of Expedia Inc. for business travelers.
Regarding Expedia
Inc., its stock began trading on Nasdaq Aug. 9, as
IAC/InterActiveCorp completed the spin-off of its travel
businesses. In a one-for-two reverse
stock split, stockholders received one share of Expedia (trading as
EXPE) and one share of IAC (trading as IACI) for every two shares
of IAC stock that they owned.
With $4.1 billion
in gross bookings in the second quarter and net income of $73.4
million, the 4,300-employee stand-alone company has substantial
cash to grow through acquisition.
Expedia intends to
continue to pursue a multibrand strategy. Those brands include
Activity World, AllLuxuryHotels.com, Anyway.com, Classic Custom Vacations, Condosaver.com,
eLong, Expedia Corporate Travel, Expedia.com, HotelDiscount.com, Hotels.com, Hotwire, Travelnow.com and TripAdvisor.
To contact
reporter Dennis Schaal, send e-mail to [email protected].