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- Opens Office in Dublin Ireland, Lyon Convention and Visitors Bureau First European City to Become Passkey-enabled |
QUINCY, Mass. November 19, 2002 Passkey, North America's
meetings and conventions standard for group hospitality management and
distribution, has entered the worldwide marketplace with the introduction
of Passkey International, Inc. The European arm of the company kicked
off operations last month with the addition of the Lyon (France) Convention
and Visitors Bureau (CVB) to its Passkey-enabledSM global network.
Citing a desire to add this state-of-the-art technology to the city¹s
already successful meeting business, the Lyon CVB has taken the lead in
introducing Europe's professional congress organizers (PCOs) and hotels
to a "new way" of managing group business on the international circuit.
Tim Durant, executive vice president of Passkey International, observes, "Our move into the worldwide marketplace is a natural progression for us and fits nicely with our other expansion plans within the global community. We have been hearing for some time from international meeting planners and CVBs the need to access our timesaving functionality and robust technology. We waited until now to make absolutely certain that we could seamlessly service and expand our capabilities to serve this important market." The first Passkey International office opened in Dublin, Ireland, early
in the summer of 2002. Its primary responsibility is to serve as
a springboard, outreaching to other parts of the continent and beyond,
as well as focusing on customer support and consulting on group meetings
management. In anticipation of this growth, Passkey has initiated
discussions with a number of technology companies in the European marketplace
to form strategic alliances that will provide an even firmer foothold internationally.
To complement this strategy, Passkey has revamped their corporate Web site
www.passkey.com to include French, Spanish and German versions.
By using Passkey¹s universal platform, all parties involved in
an event are able to access a centralized system (24-hours-a-day, 7-days-a-week)
and can share and respond to consistent, real-time reservation information.
Benefits of this ability include the capacity to search, book, modify and
even cancel reservations; easy access to information on a destination and
its area hotels; and receipt of automatic confirmations that are customized
in a variety of languages. Most importantly, Passkey facilitates
and enhances full communication and reporting capabilities between all
parties to ensure cost-effective management and success of all group events
of any size.
The move globally entailed providing intricate functionality that was specific to the demands of the worldwide marketplace. These enhancements were designed to meet the extraordinary standards already established by Passkey domestically. "The best part about this expansion is that we can show the rest of the world what has made us so successful here in the States," Durant says. "It also gives our technicians a unique set of challenges to solve that we can likely use to further enhance our system here in the United States," he adds. About Passkey:
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Passkey
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