Hotel Online  Special Report


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Customer Focused Hotels Launch
Passkey to Drive Group Business
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Hotels strengthen their offering to Meeting Planners with
full automation of the group reservation process
QUINCY, MA - April 21, 2005 - There was a time when Passkey International was only associated with city-wide housing management.  When Marriott International, Inc. and Hyatt Hotels announced their agreements with Passkey in late 2003 in an effort to offer superior service, better room block management and attrition avoidance, their meeting planning customers took notice.   "What really gets customers excited," states Joel Pyser, Vice President of Field Sales for Marriott International, Inc. "is that we are offering the Passkey solution at no charge to our customer."

With major chains like Marriott International, Inc. and Hyatt Hotels recognizing Passkey as a strategic offering - leading independents have taken notice.

Since early 2004, Passkey has expanded its independent hotel customer base inking deals with The Breakers Palm Beach, The Colonial Williamsburg, Hershey Resorts, Keystone Resort, Las Vegas Hilton, The Hilton Milwaukee City Center, Pebble Beach Resorts, Pechanga Resort and Casino, Seaport Hotel, The Scottsdale Plaza Resort, Royal Sonesta Hotel Boston, Sofitel Chicago Water Tower, Wilshire Grand Los Angeles, The Woodlands Resort & Conference Center, The Venetian Hotel Resort Casino, Wynn Resort & Casino and many others.

"We anticipate the ROI associated with the adoption of Passkey's technology to be significant," accounts Jim Mostad, Director of Sales, The Breakers Palm Beach. "With group constituting a critical portion of our business, we have always been striving to offer superior service to our group customers.  Passkey now enables us to differentiate ourselves when it comes to critical customer issues such as wash, book-around and data accuracy."

"We've focused our technology resources on helping our clients meet the demands of meeting planners no matter what venue," said Greg Pesik, Passkey's President and CEO. "Any hotel with even a modest group base is looking for ways to protect and grow their group market share.  Passkey has shifted the paradigm for how group is managed and our successful deployment of interfaces to the leading PMS systems has brought the solution full circle for independents."

"The value to our customer is clear," states John Tolbert, Executive Vice President for Boca Resorts, Inc. "What makes Passkey a win-win is our ability to direct group reservations to the most profitable reservation channel available and get better forecasting of group demand." Passkey's ROI centers around equipping meeting planners with a tool to better ensure the fulfillment of contracted room blocks.   Due to the extensive reporting and registration integration capability, a customized web portal built in Passkey quickly becomes the preferred method of hotel room reservations for groups.

Part of Passkey's success is their strategic decision to stay focused.  "Our concentration remains on being the group reservation standard for any size group," explains Pesik. "We continue to make significant investments in our technology, recognizing that we want to be the standard for weddings to major city-wide conventions.  No matter who is licensing our technology, the benefits are there to be shared by all the constituents involved in the process.  We're very pleased to see hotels take an active interest in reshaping how group is managed."

About Passkey
Passkey, the internet-based booking engine and event management solution, is the meeting 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-enabledSM 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); Worldspan; and TravelCLICK.

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Contact:

 Paul Rantilla
 Senior VP - Sales & Marketing
 Passkey International Inc.
 617.237.8200

Shawn McDonald
Marketing Consultant
Passkey International, Inc.
180 Old Colony Ave.
Quincy, MA 02170
603.766.1940 - office
http://www.passkey.com/

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Also See: Hyatt Hotels & Resorts First Major Hotel Chain to Implement Passkey GroupLink SM; All Group Reservations automatically transferred to Hotel Reservation System / March 2005
Passkey Names Bob Orlando Chief Financial Officer / January 2005
Passkey Releases Automated Rooming List Management Product; New Functionality Eliminates Manual Keying of Room Lists for Passkey Users / December 2004
Hotels Accelerating Adoption of Advanced Technology Solutions to Manage Group Business; Passkey Empowers Hotels to Increase their Online Group Bookings / June 2004
Eight More Cities to Offer Passkey; Charlotte, Cincinnati, Hartford, Ontario, Richmond, Toronto, Washington D.C., and Wildwoods Join the Passkey-enabledSM Network / February 2004
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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