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I booked it online | page 1, 2, 3, 4
Wary of losing customers to such online services, many traditional agencies are going online to expand their client base. Perhaps foremost among such agencies is Uniglobe, a franchised travel agency consortium with 1,100 locations worldwide. In 1996 Uniglobe created an online booking site which is now known as Uniglobe.com. Although only a small percentage of the company's revenue came from online bookings -- $10 million out of a total of $2.8 billion in total sales -- last year, the amount of business on the Web is expected to increase 10-fold to $100 million this year. Last year 5 percent of the company's hotel bookings were made through the Internet. Uniglobe's approach may be one way to help keep traditional travel agencies in business as a new generation of Web-savvy travelers turns to the Web. The company's agencies are hooked into its Web site, and agents receive 30 percent of the commission of all business coming from clients whom they've referred to the Web. When consumers make their first booking, they can supply the name of a travel agency and every time they purchase travel online thereafter, that agency will receive its portion of the commission. Uniglobe.com clients who don't already have a travel agent can use an agency locater system to find one nearby. The system seems to be working. Forty percent of all Uniglobe.com bookings are done by referencing a franchise agency. The rest are what the company refers to as direct Web retail customers. Discounters and brokers While most online travel agencies sell rooms at published rates, one of the best ways to get hotel bargains online is through hotel discounters or brokers. Although some of these companies are Web upstarts, others have been around for a decade or more. The old-timers are well known to savvy travelers in search of a deal who, in the past, would book strictly through an 800 number but now have the option of researching and making reservations online. One of the old-timers, Hotel Reservation Network, began business in 1991 and went online in 1995. Although the company still maintains its traditional 800 number, according to president Bob Diener, 80 percent of its reservations are now made online. The site receives 100,000 visitors daily and books an average of 1 and a half to 2 million rooms each year. It is linked to countless other sites, including some of the major online travel agencies. HRN is what is known in the travel business as a consolidator. It buys blocks of hotel rooms and then sells them at a discount off the rack rate. The discounts in HRN's case are between 20 percent and 70 percent, depending on the city and season. The average is 40 percent, according to Diener. He also says his company has rooms available for sold-out periods such as the New York Marathon, a claim not made by many others. Clients pay directly to HRN with a credit card number when making a booking and receive vouchers to give to the hotel when they check out. The company charges a $50 cancellation fee per hotel stay. HRN is expanding rapidly. It now lists 1,200 hotels and is expected to have 2,000 online by the end of the year. The company is also increasing its destinations and currently includes 38 cities throughout the U.S. and in countries such as France and Germany. In the next few months it plans to add hotels in Israel and Asia. WorldRes is another hotel booking site that has managed to permeate the Web by establishing partnerships with a multitude of sites, which receive a commission for all WorldRes bookings that originate on those sites. The company, which was created in 1995 as a Web enterprise, grew from 70 hotels in California in 1996 to 8,000 worldwide this year. The company does not release numbers of bookings or revenues. Unlike HRN, WorldRes is not strictly a hotel discounter. In fact, most of the hotel rates are published rates, but it also includes bargains, which it calls hot deals. Most of these deals are for smaller boutique hotels, and the discounts can be as much as 40 percent or more. Keep in mind, however, that deeply discounted hotel rooms may on occasion be what hotels call type specific, such as twin-bedded or smoking-floor rooms. In other words, the type of rooms that they normally have trouble selling. When making reservations, WorldRes requires no money up front. Travelers who use the service give a credit card number to guarantee the reservation but pay the hotels directly when they check out after their stay. Cancellation policies are determined by the hotels themselves. Although WorldRes has extensive hotel listings, it does not rely on a CRS for bookings; rather it has established direct relationships with all the hotels in its system. In fact, WorldRes seems to be the only online hotel booking site that the hotels themselves can access directly at any time to update their listings, making it popular with the hotels, which may be part of the reason its listings are growing so rapidly. WorldRes recently expanded its reach with the purchase of Bed&Breakfast.com, which for now remains an information-intensive site with descriptions of 27,000 B&Bs around the world. WorldRes will offer each of these B&Bs an opportunity to become part of its system, so travelers can interactively reserve B&B accommodations in the same way they currently book hotel rooms.
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