PARSIPPANY, N.J. (Dec. 21, 2004) � Cendant Hotel Group today said it
has signed an agreement with Groople Inc., a leading online group travel
booking company, to offer special rates for leisure group travel planners.
Discounted group inventory will be offered for participating Super 8®,
Days Inn®, Ramada®, Travelodge®, Howard Johnson®, Knights
Inn®, Wingate Inn® and AmeriHost Inn® franchised hotels.
The agreement will ensure that retail group rates for Cendant-franchised
hotel rooms are displayed prominently on groople.com, which caters to leisure
group travel planners.
Groople.com,
an automated group booking system, gives travel planners the ability to
plan, book and manage all aspects of their group trips online, including
travel, hotel bookings and event planning. Groople also hosts a call
center to handle special requests and more complex needs including booking
banquet facilities, registering for events and finding unique group activities.
Groople will enable Cendant lodging franchisees to check and manage
group inventory on the Internet in response to their unique market needs.
�Best of all, our franchisees will be able to tap this potential revenue
source at no additional cost,� said Bob Chafey, Cendant Hotel Group senior
director of tour markets.
�Groople helps us serve travel planners looking for a way to make group
bookings faster and easier while providing our franchised hotels with a
new way to increase their group business,� he said. �We expect our
clients will use Groople to book family reunions, military groups, sports
teams and social groups.�
Groople Chief Executive Officer David Loy said the agreement �boosts
the company�s inventory by nearly 60 percent and gives leisure travelers
more options than ever before.�
�We're excited about partnering with Cendant because we share the same
goals: to simplify group travel while providing the best rates,� he said.
With approximately 90,000 employees, New York City-based Cendant Corporation
(NYSE:CD) is primarily a provider of travel and residential real estate
services to businesses and consumers in more than 100 countries.
Cendant�s Hotel Group, based in Parsippany, N.J., is the world�s largest
lodging franchisor with 6,513 hotels representing 532,311 rooms on five
continents under the Super 8®, Days Inn®, Ramada®, Travelodge®,
Howard Johnson®, Knights Inn®, Wingate® and AmeriHost Inn®
brands. Cendant�s franchised hotels sell nearly one out of every
five economy and midpriced room-nights in the United States, and Cendant
franchises 10.4 percent of the entire U.S. hotel room supply, according
to Smith Travel Research and Cendant financial data. All hotels are
individually owned and operated under franchise agreements with Cendant
subsidiaries.
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