Sabre Diving Into E-Mtgs.
By CHRIS DAVIS
Monday, September 18 2000
Monday, September 18 2000
Published on AllBusiness.com
<B>Sabre Diving Into E-Mtgs.</B>
<I>GetThere Buy Raises Weighty Partnerships</I>
By Chris Davis
The burgeoning alliances between online meeting management firms and booking providers was shaken up last month, with the Sabre Holdings Group's proposed $757 million purchase of GetThere Inc., as both players have recent, but deep, ties to the online meeting industry.
GetThere purchased meeting portal AllMeetings.com in July, three months after Sabre formed a partnership with AllMeetings competitor EventSource.com that positioned Sabre as the portal's exclusive global distribution system. With Sabre the pending owner of AllMeetings, there are implications for EventSource.
"A lot of these details won't be known until after the deal closes and we can sit down and have substantial discussions with GetThere and AllMeetings," said Sabre vice president of marketing and product development Pete Stevens. "But we have established partnerships because we all think the corporate use of group tools has a great upside, and nobody has solved all the problems yet."
Stevens said Sabre has no intention of restricting its possibilities in partnering with meeting and group management outfits. "We will look at all the players and give corporations a choice," he said. "They will choose tools they like, and that will include shades of all different players."
But changes to the deal positioning Sabre as EventSource's exclusive booking engine are unlikely, Stevens said: "We anticipate no change in those agreements." Officials from EventSource, AllMeetings and GetThere declined comment.
"This will have a dramatic effect on the landscape of online meeting management, and if I were EventSource or their customers, I would have some concerns," said Rob Wald, director of product marketing at online booking vendor E-Travel, a competitor of GetThere and a subsidiary of Oracle Corp. "Sabre has said they're looking for an integrated, GDS-independent, direct-link product, which sounds more like GetThere than BTS. EventSource is locked up to Sabre and that product might have a limited future."
E-Travel has an alliance with meeting portal StarCite, but the relationship is not exclusive. E-Travel and StarCite executives have argued that exclusive contracts between online booking engines and meeting portals is unwise due to the limitation of choice they offer. "One year from now it's a very good bet that the online meeting management industry will be dramatically different and that does not help EventSource," Wald said. "They cannot strike a development with another player."
Other industry analysts agreed that changes would be forthcoming.
<I>GetThere Buy Raises Weighty Partnerships</I>
By Chris Davis
The burgeoning alliances between online meeting management firms and booking providers was shaken up last month, with the Sabre Holdings Group's proposed $757 million purchase of GetThere Inc., as both players have recent, but deep, ties to the online meeting industry.
GetThere purchased meeting portal AllMeetings.com in July, three months after Sabre formed a partnership with AllMeetings competitor EventSource.com that positioned Sabre as the portal's exclusive global distribution system. With Sabre the pending owner of AllMeetings, there are implications for EventSource.
"A lot of these details won't be known until after the deal closes and we can sit down and have substantial discussions with GetThere and AllMeetings," said Sabre vice president of marketing and product development Pete Stevens. "But we have established partnerships because we all think the corporate use of group tools has a great upside, and nobody has solved all the problems yet."
Stevens said Sabre has no intention of restricting its possibilities in partnering with meeting and group management outfits. "We will look at all the players and give corporations a choice," he said. "They will choose tools they like, and that will include shades of all different players."
But changes to the deal positioning Sabre as EventSource's exclusive booking engine are unlikely, Stevens said: "We anticipate no change in those agreements." Officials from EventSource, AllMeetings and GetThere declined comment.
"This will have a dramatic effect on the landscape of online meeting management, and if I were EventSource or their customers, I would have some concerns," said Rob Wald, director of product marketing at online booking vendor E-Travel, a competitor of GetThere and a subsidiary of Oracle Corp. "Sabre has said they're looking for an integrated, GDS-independent, direct-link product, which sounds more like GetThere than BTS. EventSource is locked up to Sabre and that product might have a limited future."
E-Travel has an alliance with meeting portal StarCite, but the relationship is not exclusive. E-Travel and StarCite executives have argued that exclusive contracts between online booking engines and meeting portals is unwise due to the limitation of choice they offer. "One year from now it's a very good bet that the online meeting management industry will be dramatically different and that does not help EventSource," Wald said. "They cannot strike a development with another player."
Other industry analysts agreed that changes would be forthcoming.