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Carlson's Leisure Group Uses BackWeb to Deliver Critical Information to Travel Agents' Desktops
 
SAN JOSE, Calif., March 24, 1999 -  BackWeb Technologies today announced that its Internet communications platform has been chosen by Carlson Leisure Group -- a world leader in leisure travel and travel agency franchising -- to deliver critical business information to more than 10,000 travel agents worldwide. BackWeb was selected from a group of 15 knowledge distribution systems that were evaluated by Carlson Leisure Group over a six-week period.

"BackWeb's Internet communications platform has had an immediate impact on our bottom line," said Deslie Webb, VP-technology for Carlson Leisure Group. "In the face of increasing pressure from Internet travel services, we determined that BackWeb gives us a distinct competitive advantage through right-on-time delivery of critical pricing and other agency-specific information."

By integrating BackWeb's platform with its secure internal network, Mercavia, Carlson Leisure Group created an extranet, Mercavia RS (reservation system), for servicing customers directly, developing a front-end selling system, and integrating third party software applications to handle back office and customer profiling functions. BackWeb automatically delivers critical business information -- such as airline inventory that agents can immediately sell to consumers, travel news, and promotional information -- to the desktop.

"The old way of communicating via untimely, inaccurate, paper-based methods made it impossible to develop a competitive advantage," said Webb. "We especially like BackWeb's ease-of-use, scalability, targeted distribution and automated functionality. Other solutions on the market didn't deliver information quickly enough, were too complicated to use, or were subject to human error. Overall, BackWeb has given us a stronger market position, and made us a more cost-effective, productive company."

Mercavia RS notifies users of market changes through attention-grabbing "Flashes," or customized multimedia alerts, that are delivered to the sales force regardless of the application currently running. The priority of each Flash is tiered according to importance. Through this targeted delivery of specialized information, the new system assists Carlson's leisure and franchise agencies in becoming consumer advocates. In addition, Mercavia RS is planned to simultaneously draw from the databases of many reservation systems while also tapping the difficult-to-reach smaller, specialized suppliers. Time-critical information would then be delivered though BackWeb's Polite Agent(TM) technology, which conserves network bandwidth by only downloading content during a computer's idle network time.

About BackWeb Technologies

BackWeb Technologies is a leading provider of Internet communication infrastructure and applications that enable companies to manage the delivery of time-sensitive, business-critical information to the extended enterprise. Corporations such as Cisco, Compaq, Rite Aid and more than 250 other corporate customers have deployed BackWeb's Internet communication infrastructure and applications for key business operations including sales, customer service, competitive intelligence and software distribution. BackWeb Technologies is headquartered in San Jose, California and Ramat Gan, Israel, with offices in New York, Chicago, Israel, Canada, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Sweden, the United Kingdom and Japan. For more information, visit its Web site at www.backweb.com or call 800-863-0100.
 

About Carlson Leisure Group

Carlson Leisure Group, a wholly-owned division of Minneapolis-based Carlson Companies, Inc., manages leisure and franchise travel operations worldwide. Carlson Leisure Group companies and brands include:  Carlson Wagonlit Travel Associates and Travel Agents International (more than 1,200 franchised locations in North America); Carlson Leisure Group U.K., comprised of Inspirations tour operations, Caledonian Airways (minority owner), and Carlson Worldchoice (manages more than 1,000 travel agency locations); Carlson Travel Academies; Neiman Marcus Travel Services; Carlson Vacations (Russia); and Carlson Destination Marketing Services. In 1998, for the second consecutive year, the Carlson Wagonlit Travel Associate program was named the top travel business franchise by Entrepreneur magazine and the sixth best franchiser by Franchise Times.

NOTE: BackWeb, Sales Accelerator, Polite Agent and Neighborcast are trademarks of BackWeb Technologies. All other trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

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Contact:
Susan Kohl, Director, 
APR, Public Relations of BackWeb Technologies, 
408-933-1769, 
[email protected]
Steve Loucks, 
Director, Public Relations of Carlson Leisure Group, 612-212-2267, 
or [email protected]
 http:/www.backweb.com
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Also See: Travel Weekly Conference Predicts Major Changes in Travel Purchase Process / June 1998 

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