Hotel Online Special Report


Eight More Cities to Offer Passkey; 
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Charlotte, Cincinnati, Hartford, Ontario, Richmond,
Toronto, Washington D.C., and Wildwoods
Join the Passkey-enabledSM Network
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QUINCY, Mass. - February 19, 2004 - Greg Pesik, President and CEO of Passkey International, Inc., announced today that 8 more Convention & Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) have selected Passkey as their housing technology.  Charlotte (North Carolina), Cincinnati (Ohio), Hartford (Connecticut), Ontario (California), Richmond (Virginia), Toronto (Canada), Washington D.C., Wildwoods (New Jersey), will all be offering their meeting planners Passkey to manage their events.  

Passkey is setting the standard for managing group events, no matter what size or how complex.  The primary reasons that more and more meeting destinations are implementing Passkey are to address their customers' need to fight attrition and control book-around challenges, to provide a user-friendly housing management tool and to deliver a consistent housing management process.  With 85% of the major convention cities nationwide now Passkey-enabled, meeting planners are able to move from venue to venue without having to learn new processes as their event location changes.

"Passkey is an industry acknowledged best-of-breed solution that we are thrilled to be deploying," said Bruce MacMillan, president and CEO of Tourism Toronto.  "Clients will experience an enhanced level of service to improve their business. The implementation of Passkey is a part of our innovative 'Channel of First Resort' digital strategy."

Meeting planners will continue to benefit from utilizing the same innovative Passkey solution from one city to another.  Some of the benefits include their ability to have access to Passkey's collaborative, centralized event database, providing them accurate visibility 24/7 into how their meetings are materializing. Accessibility to real-time event booking data for planners, and an attractive, simple to use reservation vehicle for attendees, minimizes the incidence of attendees booking around group blocks.  In turn, planners' exposure to attrition charges is minimized.  Planners also have access to powerful tools for managing booking behavior and can customize event websites, offering attendees a complete hotel shopping experience including the ability to make, modify, or cancel reservations online and receive instant confirmations.  Additionally, planners and participating hotels have the ability to run reports at anytime, further enhancing the communication between meeting planners, housing managers and event hotels.

"Having these cities become Passkey-enabled is tremendous for us - the meeting planners," explained Colette Fairchild, trade show director of H.H. Backer Associates Inc. "Being able to use Passkey's robust group management tools from one city to another, makes my life so much easier, and I have more time to concentrate on other aspects to ensure the success of my event and the satisfaction of my attendees."

Passkey is the premier web-based solution providing all parties involved in city-wide meeting and convention planning with real-time reports and updates at anytime.  Its flexibility and power, for example, allows hotels to take advantage of unused blocks of rooms during a given event and provides all parties involved with a more efficient hotel booking process, as well as access to consistent, accurate information.

"With each new Passkey-enabled venue, the ability for meeting planners to move easily from city to city becomes that much easier," says Paul Rantilla, Passkey's senior vice president of sales and marketing. "Given the numerous challenges that meeting planners already face, having a custom or site-specific housing technology just doesn't make sense.  Meeting planners want the process consistency, and preservation of historical data that Passkey provides - no matter the location."

Another significant benefit to cities and planners is Passkey RegLinkSM, which enables any registration system to seamlessly integrate with Passkey, a combination acknowledged to be the number one means of reducing book-arounds.  Passkey's ability to integrate with the diversity of available registration solutions, whether proprietary or commercial, allows Passkey-enabled cities to offer this powerful tool for reducing attrition risk regardless of the registration tool a planner chooses to use.

About Passkey International, Inc.
Passkey, the Internet-based booking engine and event management solution, is the meetings and convention industry's standard for group reservations management and distribution.  The Quincy, Mass.-based provider empowers organizers of single property meetings and city-wide events with access to a Web-based application that provides all parties with 24/7, shared access to critical event information and real-time reports.  The Passkey-enabled SM global network consists of Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs), hotels, association and corporate meeting planners, meeting management companies, Professional Congress Organizers (PCOs), travel agencies, and registration vendors.  Passkey investors include:  Lazard Technology Partners; Galileo (NYSE: GLC) (www.galileo.com); Worldspan (www.worldspan.com); and TravelCLICK (www.travelclick.net). Company Website: http://www.passkey.com

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Contact:

Dahlia El Gazzar
Passkey
Director of Marketing
180 Old Colony Avenue
Quincy, MA  02170
voice: 617-237-8238
email: [email protected]
http://www.passkey.com


 


 
Also See: Marriott To Offer Passkey Meeting Management Tool; Meeting Planners Receive Greater Control and Flexibility / October 2003
Passkey is Named MPI's Exclusive Digital Partner for Group Housing / March 2003
Passkey Appoints Chris Avery as New VP, Business Development / March 2003
Passkey Goes Global; Opens Office in Dublin, Lyon Convention and Visitors Bureau First European City to Become Passkey-enabled / Nov 2002
Boca Resorts, Inc., Selects Passkey to Further Serve Meeting and Event Planners / Oct 2002
Omni Hotels First to Implement Passkey Enterprise Solution Across Entire 40-Property Portfolio / Oct 2002
PGA of America Hits the Green With Passkey / Aug 2002
Nothing But BlueSkyz and Passkey / Sept 2002
Jay Ramadorai Joins Passkey as Senior Vice President & Chief Technology Officer / July 2002
Passkey Names Former Hotel Executives Paul Rantilla and Andrew Mace to Sales Positions / April 2002 


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