Quincy, MA (December 2000) - Passkey, the leading provider of Web-based integrated group hotel reservation, event registration and travel solutions for the $120 billion meetings and convention industry, and TravelCLICK, Inc., the preeminent provider of digital media and data solutions to the travel industry, have signed a strategic alliance agreement to develop and market new products and services for the group meetings market. 

Concurrently, TravelCLICK closed on a $3 million equity capital investment in Passkey.  This investment is part of a significantly larger round of financing for Passkey, which will be finalized by the end of 2000.  Passkey also announced that Ray Cohen, the President of TravelCLICK, will join its board of directors.
Under the terms of the strategic alliance agreement, TravelCLICK will become the marketing and sales arm for Passkey products specific for the hotel industry, as well as for future products the two companies plan to co-develop.  The product focus will be on three key areas: enabling hotel chains and individual hotels to automate their group bookings via the web; providing hoteliers with actionable data on the group market; and developing a new electronic advertising venue for local firms that want to reach inbound group visitors to a particular city on a particular date.  The alliance complements each company�s goal of helping hoteliers increase their electronic bookings and maximize their revenues.

Passkey is widely regarded in meeting and convention circles as the real-time housing data management solution for city-wide conventions.  The Passkey city-wide product has been endorsed by IACVB (International Association of Convention & Visitors Bureaus) and is currently in place in 31 cities nationwide.  As of early December, Passkey has transacted convention housing for more than 700,000 attendees, across more than 1,500 hotels, and is already working with strategic properties to refine an application that allows hotels to use the Passkey advanced booking, tracking and reporting system for single-property meetings.  

TravelCLICK currently provides detailed pricing and booking data on the travel agent market, as well as unique electronic advertising programs, to nearly 5,000 hotels worldwide.  The company�s data products allow hoteliers to track their pricing and market share versus their competitive set in the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) used by travel agents, which generate over 44 million hotel reservations per year.  TravelCLICK also offers targeted electronic advertising reach on more than 450,000 travel agent desktop terminals via exclusive point of sale display relationships with each of the major GDSs (Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus, and Worldspan). 

Together, Passkey and TravelCLICK intend to help hotels simplify their handling of group bookings, and improve revenue management of this major segment of their business.  �The alliance of Passkey and TravelCLICK is an important tactical move advancing our strategy to put real-time revenue management and forecasting tools in the hands of anyone who manages group room blocks,� said Roger Paradis, President of Passkey.  �We are pleased that TravelCLICK shares our strategic vision, and we expect to be announcing additional alliances and investment partners in the next few weeks.� 

�Group bookings are the largest un-automated component of a hotel�s total bookings,� said TravelCLICK president and co-CEO Ray Cohen.  �As these bookings become automated through Passkey�s system solutions, we will capture data that hoteliers need for decision-making and turn it into actionable intelligence on the group market, as we�ve successfully done with the transient traveler market that today largely books through the GDSs.�
�Passkey is far and away the leader in the automated group booking space,� continued Richard Gray, chairman and co-CEO of TravelCLICK.  �The alliance will allow our 150 sales consultants around the world to assist individual hotels with both the transient and group segments of their business.  We look forward to what will come from this partnership of industry leaders.�

Headquartered in Quincy, MA, Passkey.com has emerged as the �metamediary� for the $120 billion meetings industry. Passkey provides the next generation of housing software and integrates it through partnerships and product development with the other key areas of meeting planner needs: the RFP process (through alliances with PlanSoft, and MeetingMakers), air and car reservations (with Sabre/McCord), on-line event registration, pre-/post-con housing and real time group reservations technology.

Headquartered in the Chicago area, TravelCLICK is the world�s preeminent provider of digital media and data solutions to the travel industry.  The company has a rapidly growing workforce of over 300 people spanning more than 130 countries, with divisional offices in New York; Chicago; San Francisco; Geneva, Switzerland; and Melbourne, Australia. Established in 1996 as Global Marketing Services (GMS), the company entered into an investment partnership with Bain Capital, Inc. in 1999 to fuel its expansion.  Subsequently, the company changed its name to TravelCLICK to reflect an expanded product base, including Phaser, Hotelligence Reports,
ChannelTRAK, Galileo Headlines, Sabre and Abacus PromoSpots, Sabre Virtually There, Galileo Featured Property and Amadeus Instant Marketing.