SAUSALITO, Calif. -- EventSource.com, a Web site for meeting
planners, announced a partnership with American Airlines that will
add air tickets to its Web site offerings.
At the site, planners will be able to calculate air costs for a
meeting and forward requests for proposals to American.
Currently,EventSource.com enables meeting planners to submit
on-line RFPs to hotels and other meeting venues.
Now, planners will be able to compare the pricing differences of
flying meeting attendees to various cities, such as Chicago vs. Las
Vegas vs. Philadelphia, according to Ed Sarraille, president and
chief executive officer of EventSource.com.
"One of the biggest challenges corporate meeting planners face
is estimating accurately and managing the cost of their destination
options," Sarraille said. "This partnership provides planners with
immediate access to critical information that will help them make
the best business decisions to lower their overall meeting costs
and increase efficiency," he added.
The fares shown after a search are based on American's
group-pricing data.
When a planner narrows the choices to a few cities, an RFP can
be sent to American to get an exact rate quote.
George Coyle, American Airlines product manager, group and
meeting travel, said the partnership will "leverage an innovative,
invaluable new channel that will help us reach meeting planners"
and "provide customers with a comprehensive meeting cost
solution."
Sarraille said American is the first in a series of partnerships
that EventSource.com aims to form to make group air cost and
meetings data available via the Internet.
EventSource.com has managed more than 20,000 event requests to
more than 500 cities worldwide since it was formed in 1998,
according to a spokesperson for the firm.