Vacation.com rounded out its portfolio of
hotel alliances this week by announcing a preferred-supplier pact
with Starwood Hotels & Resorts, effective July 1.
The latest deal,
announced during the annual Vacation.com conference now under way
in New Orleans, is the third piece of the group's hotel program to
be put in place this year.
In January,
Vacation.com signed its first-ever preferred-supplier agreement
with a hotel chain, involving 11 brands of Marriott International.
It also struck a deal in April with Radius, the corporate travel
management group, giving Vacation.com agencies access to the Radius
Preferred Hotel Rate Program plus that group's fare-finder and
share-shifting technology called Wheel 2.0.
Stephen
McGillivray, Vacation.com vice president of marketing, said
agencies that produced more than 200 room nights for Marriott in
2006 were automatically enrolled in a share-shifting program that
rewards those agencies for bringing their Marriott production up by
10% or more this year. They also will earn bonuses for increasing
the share of their Marriott bookings paid for with an American
Express card.
McGillivray said
Starwood and Vacation.com will implement similar programs to reward
members for moving business to Starwood's 850 properties
representing nine brands: Luxury Collection, Four Points by
Sheraton, Le Meridien, St. Regis, Sheraton, W, Westin, as well as
the recently announced Aloft and Element.
Vacation.com's
hotel portfolio has a fourth component, a long-standing
preferred-supplier arrangement with CCRA International, a provider
of preferred-rate hotel programs for agents which now gives access
to its product via the CCRAtravel.com booking portal.
Meanwhile,
Vacation.com also has an established preferred-supplier deal with
SuperClubs and promotes other inclusive brands through its
preferred tour operator suppliers.
To contact the reporter who wrote this article, send e-mail
to Nadine Godwin at [email protected].