Technology
N E W S T A N D
And NEWS you can USE
Compiled by Jon Inge [email protected]
and Mark Haley [email protected]
People Watching
Moving quickly to resolve its leadership succession, Eltrax
named Barry Logan as President of its Hospitality Group. This will now
include both the previous lodging and restaurant divisions, and will offer
the Medallion Property Management System and the SQUiRREL Restaurant Management
System. Mr. Logan was President of SQUiRREL, which he helped found in 1984,
and will succeed Penny Sellers, who recently announced her intention to
retire at the end of the year.
* * *
Still hot on the acquisition trail, Hospitality Solutions International
(HSI) acquired Symbiotic Systems Corp of Boulder, Colorado. Symbiotic brings
its FoodService BOSS suite of foodservice software tools, Maintenance Manager
preventive maintenance program and WEB-POS Internet service and development
system, plus over 16,000 users, to HSI's existing range of CRS, PMS, POS
and Club systems.
***
Accor Economy Lodging, which operates the Red Roof Inns, Motel 6 and
Studio 6 brands, appointed Jeffrey T. Winslow as Executive VP and CIO;
He had been Senior VP and CIO of Red Roof Inns, which Accor acquired in
August. Mr. Winslow will be responsible for all information systems for
the division, as well as for Accor North America, which includes the Novotel
and Sofitel lodging brands.
***
Another ITT Sheraton alumnus, Bob Bowman, accepts the CEO position
at Cyberian Outpost. Bowman's past positions include Sheraton CFO and ITT
President as well as Treasurer of the State of Michigan. Internet software
distributor Cyberian, best known for a great ticker symbol (COOL), will
look to Bowman for leadership in cultivating and deepening on-line relationships
with individual buyers.
Internet Reservations
Consolidation is the word of the week. Sabre unit Travelocity
buys Preview Travel to seize a commanding lead in the Internet travel market
and mindshare wars. The combined entity will be an independent public company
traded on NASDAQ. This move will free Sabre parent AMR from having a dot
com company depressing earnings, while liberating Travelocity from the
constraints of a parent business with earnings and assets other than exclusive
deals with megaportals Yahoo! and AOL . Now distant #2 Microsoft Expedia
will be spun off to compete with the $1B combination of Travelocity and
Preview Travel.
***
Cats and dogs need reservations, too! Best Friends Resorts and Salons,
based in Norwalk, CT, has ordered a xenonCRS system from Hotel
Data Systems, to be installed at its corporate offices and its existing
30 locations over a 50-user WAN. The company, which provides kennel services
for dogs and cats, plans to expand at the rate of an additional 10 units
per year.
***
Veteran hospitality industry executive Bill Watson has joined the Board
of Directors for Passkey.com, a provider
of Internet-based convention housing and group reservation management software.
With 30 years in the industry, Mr. Watson has in recent years been Executive
VP of Best Western International, responsible for worldwide operations,
marketing and information systems, VP and Director/Rooms and Reservations
for ITT Sheraton Corporation and Vice Chairman of Pegasus Systems.
Passkey also recently announced alliances with Sabre, to co-develop
an interface combining its group hotel room-block management system with
Sabre's air, car and hotel resources, and with Pegasus Systems to integrate
Pegasus' electronic distribution system and provide group business with
direct reservations connections to hotels.
***
USAHotelGuide.com has introduced
a new private label program that allows online sites to provide hotel reservation
services and share in the commission revenue. Private labeled sites can
be customized to have the same look and feel of the partner company's site,
while using the USAHotelGuide.com booking engine and hotel database to
provide detailed information on properties and room availability. Partners
can have access to all 30,000 hotels or only those hotels within a desired
city and/or state; commissions generated from bookings made through the
site will be shared on a percentage basis.
***
Newmarket Software and Keane, Inc. announced a fast-track development
and deployment program for Newmarket's www.meetingbroker.com site, an e-community
for meeting planners and suppliers. The site is expected to feature 500
properties by year end. The interesting thing about this project? Keane's
first project for Newmarket was Y2K compliance evaluation and certification.
Now the parties have successfully transitioned the relationship to non-Y2K
work.
***
Plansoft, another meeting planner e-community, offers a two-way information
exchange with six meeting planner magazines operated by Adams Business
Media. www.plansoft.com will feature
daily news feeds edited for meeting planners from Adams. Adam's www.meetingsnet.com
will host Plansoft hotel database content in a spot that planners frequent.
***
ResExpress unveiled its WebCRS
service, claimed to be the first purely Web-based, private label hotel
Central Reservation System, at Hospitality Solutions 99 in London. WebCRS'
target market is small and mid-sized hotel groups looking to deploy a custom,
private label CRS quickly with little capital cost, as an outsourced service
provided via the Internet.
***
Three hotel marketing representation companies representing more than
1,200 properties worldwide have joined the Pegasus
Commission Processing service to consolidate and process travel agent commission
payments. The companies are Interlink (600 properties, based in Ro de Janeiro),
Luxe Worldwide Hospitality (250 properties, Los Angeles) and ReservHOTEL
(500 properties, Duluth, GA).
Homestead Village Guest Studios also joined Pegasus Commission Processing,
bringing in a further 130+ locations.
The Denver Metro Convention Visitors Bureau (CVB) added hotel booking
capabilities to its Internet site at the end of September, becoming the
first CVB to use the new "Powered by Pegasus" booking engine from Pegasus
Electronic Distribution. The Denver CVB has seen a 330-percent increase
in traffic since re-launching its Web site in January, now averaging over
1,200 visitors per day, and claims to be one of the few online travel reservations
sites where travel agents can book online and receive their full commissions.
***
Another auction site hits the Net: Bid4Vacations.com
offers travelers the opportunity to bid on worldwide cruise and travel
packages from over 1800 properties at rates approximately 50-65 percent
off retail pricing.
***
Budgethotels.com has merged Hotel Reservations Networks' (HRN) 1,200-property
database onto its new hotel reservation system, and plans to add a further
35,000 properties in the next quarter.
***
WorldRes.com, Inc. opened a United
Kingdom (UK) office in Staines, Middlesex, and appointed Richard Lewis
as its UK president. Lewis will be responsible for UK marketing and sales
and hotel account management, as well as acting as a liaison with destination
marketing organizations and overseeing sales in Europe, the Middle East
and Africa. Lewis was previously vice president of hotel distribution for
Turner Broadcasting.
***
Getting Big-ger: Internet gateway vendor The BigHub.com
has signed a letter of intent with independent travel agency Tzell Travel
to create The BigTravel.com, a full-service,
web travel agency to be launched in late 1999 on The BigHub.com Internet
network. The joint venture will combine The BigHub.com's Web and search
engine skills with Tzell's travel services management.
***
Under a new agreement, XTRA On-Line
Corp (XOL) will market IXATA.COM's RFP
Express service through XOL's PowerTrip.com
corporate online travel management product. The combination will provide
corporate travel managers with direct booking access to their companies'
preferred hotel programs, selected using RFP Express.
Guest Services
Bass Hotels & Resorts has contracted with CAIS
Internet to install its high-speed Internet access in an initial 60 Staybridge
Suites properties nationwide. Access will be provided for a flat fee in
the guestrooms, and at no charge in the property libraries for guests'
entertainment, general e-commerce and research needs.
***
TIV, a Dallas-based telecommunications
services consulting firm, is spinning off a new company called WiredInn.com
to deliver Internet solutions to its 350 five-star international hotel
clients. Interestingly, the new company will focus entirely on the international
hospitality marketplace, offering Internet connectivity, hotel e-business
solutions, and Internet advertising services.
***
Hotels in five more cities have signed up for Solar Communications
Group's PCRoomlink service, which
includes PCs in the guestrooms with high-speed Internet access to e-mail,
the Web and popular software applications. The hotels (The Houstonian Hotel,
Club & Spa in Houston, Texas, the Excelsior Hotel in New York, N.Y.,
the Admiral Fell Inn, Baltimore, Md., The Yarrow Hotel and Conference Center,
Park City, Utah, and the Marietta Conference Center & Resort, Marietta
Ga.) will go live with the service by mid-November. The company recently
signed an agreement with the Trump International Hotel & Tower, New
York, N.Y., and already has the system running at The Holiday Inn in Runnemede,
N.J.
Solar Communications Group is in the process of merging into Thermaltec
International Corp.
***
Stormont Trice Corp has selected Darwin
Networks to provide high-speed Internet access for the guest and meeting
rooms in all ten of its properties, which include the Atlanta Marriott
Gwinnett Place, the Norfolk Waterside Marriott, and Marriott's Bay Point
Resort Village in Panama City Beach, Florida. Darwin uses Etherloop technology
from Elastic Networks to deliver up to 6Mbps service over existing copper
wire, and will install its YesWare software suite for plug and play connectivity,
system management and billing. The service is currently available at the
Franklin Marriott Cool Springs in Franklin, Tennessee; additional properties
will be deployed by mid-October.
***
Marriott has extended its guestroom Internet access agreement with
STSN to include Ritz-Carlton's approximately
5,000 guestrooms, meeting rooms and business centers, to be installed by
January 2000. STSN's solution includes a multi-port desktop device that
provides users with three plug-and-play options to access the Net: a standard
Ethernet or USB cable for the high-speed Internet service, or a modem cable
for traditional dial-up speeds. The cables are available in each hotel
room, and PC cards are available for checkout at the front desk; the multi-port
device eliminates IP addressing issues and provides a firewall secure environment
for each hotel room.
***
Syntellect Interactive Services
(SIS) introduced a pay-per-view service solution for the hospitality and
entertainment industry using real-time credit card processing via the telephone.
The service eliminates manual processing of PPV charges at the property
and its almost inevitable guest disputes.
Purchasing
MeriStar Hotels & Resorts has completed its phase one deployment
of PurchasePro.com's corporate purchasing
solution and will now begin integrating the application throughout its
hotel network.
PurchasePro sets up public and private "e-marketplaces" for specific
industries, where businesses can buy and sell a wide range of products
and services in an efficient, competitive and cost-effective manner. Hospitality
clients to date include Bellagio, Mirage, Carnival Cruise Lines, MGM Grand,
Mission Industries, Park Place Entertainment (formerly Hilton Gaming),
Best Western International and Prime Hospitality.
***
"Hotelworks.com" is the new company
name for Hospitality Worldwide Services ("HWS"), which has decided to focus
on its e-Commerce supply and distribution business and shed its construction,
development and asset management units. The plans include releasing a new
web portal, the integration of the Company's core purchasing and logistics
subsidiaries (Leonard Parker Company, Parker Reorder Online and Bekins
Distribution Services) and the change of name. The new web portal is being
designed to make the supply and reorder process far more of an ongoing
dynamic relationship rather than a series of separate related transactions.
Hotelworks.com intends to offer the general public products that have been
historically limited to the hospitality industry. |
