ALEXANDRIA, Va. -- Outtask may be the new kid on the block in the
corporate self-booking industry, but it's already made a name for
itself.
Outtask's booking product, Cliqbook, which hit the streets this
year, claims to be the only major self-booking tool in the
marketplace that presents Web fares in the same display as GDS
fares.
"We're approaching 200 customers and processing 2,000 to 3,000
transactions every day," said Tom DePasquale, president and CEO of
Outtask.
"We launched the product seven months ago, and we think we
entered the marketplace at the right time with the right
offering."
He added that Outtask has reselling agreements with five of the
top 10 corporate agencies and will have agreements with three more
by the end of the year.
Before the product launch, DePasquale said travel management
companies advised Outtask not to contend with the other online
corporate tools in the marketplace, most of which are GDS-owned and
backed by more resources than independent Outtask.
However, the notion of competing with the GDSs was not a
deterrent. Rather, it was an incentive to enter the fray,
DePasquale said.
"The other players in this space developed their products to
sell GDS fares," he said. "Cliqbook integrates Web fares with GDS
fares, which is a huge selling point. The GDSs aren't focused on
Web fares."
GetThere and e-Travel -- owned by Sabre and Amadeus,
respectively -- have announced intentions to integrate Web-search
tools into their booking engines but haven't launched those
initiatives yet.
"Outtask is a small company but it has been very aggressive,"
said Norm Rose, industry analyst and president of Travel Tech
Consulting in Belmont, Calif.
"The GDSs have been known to move slowly as far as innovation,"
Rose said. By integrating inventory from multiple sources, he
added, "Outtask has been innovative to serve the needs of business
travelers. It's a function that's independent from the GDS
model."
American Express, which offers its own booking tool powered by
GetThere's technology, said the number of Cliqbook transactions the
agency processes at its Miami-based e-fulfillment center is rapidly
growing.
Gloria Bohan, president of Omega World Travel in Fairfax, Va.,
said the combination of Cliqbook with Vinnet, Outtask's
expense-reporting tool, results in an "end-to-end solution that's
well done."
Bohan said Omega's clients, especially small and midsize
corporations, are interested in Cliqbook because they're more
likely to want a Web-fare search tool than large corporations that
have deeply discounted, negotiated fares already loaded in the
GDS.
GetThere is a more viable product for large corporations, added
Dan Bohan, Omega's chief operating officer, because GetThere can
best accommodate the loading of many private fares and multiple
travel policies.
Linwood Hayes, senior vice president at Travel Inc. in Duluth,
Ga., said four of his clients have adopted Cliqbook, including
insurance firm Blue Cross and Blue Shield and Carter's, a supplier
of children's clothing.
"From the standpoint of functionality and speed, Cliqbook is the
best tool in the marketplace," Hayes said. "And the Web-faring
piece is very, very attractive to corporations."
Progress Energy, a Raleigh, N.C.-based company that recently
adopted Cliqbook, chose the tool because it enables travelers to
access Web fares and enables the company to capture and record
segments not booked in the GDSs, said Wendy Broom, the company's
travel coordinator.
"I researched booking tools for months and months, and the only
one that could pull in Internet fares was Cliqbook," Broom
said.
"Our travelers kept telling me we could get cheaper fares on
line, but we need to capture that information to use as leverage in
negotiations," she said.
"It's a cutthroat world, and we have to use every edge
possible."
Companies such as American Airlines and Orbitz have warned they
will deny access to some Web-search tools, possibly reducing the
effectiveness of these programs.
DePasquale said no supplier has shut out Cliqbook, a tool that
enables corporations to select which Web sites they want to
search.
"No one's blocking us at this time," DePasquale said. "That
doesn't mean that they won't."