NTM NEWS

Communications

• mytripandmore.com now available via a link on the NTM Web Site
• Delta electronic ticket exchanges can no longer be voided. This will be happening with all major carriers in the near future.
• A special Travel Accounting Seminar for NTM customers has been tentatively set for Tuesday morning, September 26. Please reserve that date; the exact time and location will follow.

WWW Travel Resource of the Month:
TECH BYTES, a marketing firm in Greenville, S.C., is offering wireless delivery of destination data for major cities in "bite-sized chunks" for road warriors on the go. 10Best.com is on the Web at [www.10Best.com] and is accessible to travelers with digital phones, pagers and PDAs at [wap.10best.com]. Users can request categories such as the top 10 spots for breakfast, the top 10 spots for a casual lunch or the top 10 cafes for a quick desert and coffee.

Cost Savings Tip of the Month:
Are your travelers/traveler arrangers aware that every time they make a change to a ticket and another ticket must be issued, your company pays an additional transaction fee? Furthermore, if they are making changes to nonrefundable tickets, they are also incurring an airline administrative fee of $75 or more.

Changes can't always be avoided, but educating your travelers on the fees involved (both agency and airline) may help them better plan and reduce unnecessary fees.

If you receive the Segment Analysis travel management report, this report will indicate the number of "reissue" transactions so you can compare this to the total number of tickets issued.

Industry News

Air

• Aloha Airlines will launch service from Hawaii to the Los Angeles area next year - the first time in its 54-year history it is doing so. Two aircraft will be used to fly from Honolulu and Maui to a secondary airport in the Los Angeles area, and a third will be used to fly to an as-yet-undecided Pacific destination, he said. Aloha has ruled out flying to LAX and is considering John Wayne, Long Beach, Burbank and Ontario airports.
• American Airlines Vacations eliminated travel agent commissions for phone bookings of its U.S. fly-drive program that include hotel vouchers for Marriott hotel stays. The carrier said it made the move to stop agents from selling the programs to business clients specifically to take advantage of the low air fares that come with the package and not using the hotel vouchers. Commissions for automated bookings were reduced from 11% to 5%.
• Due to major renovations, the Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport will rename all their gates and concourses on Sept. 1. The gates and concourses will be renumbered according to the alpha-numeric system to make the airport more efficient for employees and customers.
• Orbitz, the consumer travel Web site owned by the five largest U.S. carriers, will get millions of dollars a year in free advertising, marketing and promotions from each of its owners and the 23 airlines participating in the site by contractual arrangement. The contract, obtained by TM, offers the carriers a bunch of ways to pay off their obligation. One of the options: Give Orbitz exclusive access to lower fares. Some Orbitz opponents are raising a stink over the provision. In response, the company defended the arrangement as a legitimate and legal business practice, noting the exclusive fare is just one of many options.
• Plagued by delays and cancellations, including a 56.6% on-time rate in May, United has added about four minutes into the time allotted for each scheduled flight, allowed for more aircraft ground time and preemptively cut more than 1,500 flights from its scheduled operations this month. Next month United will cut more than 1,800 flights, about 2.5% of its schedule, and in September it will cut nearly 2,000, airline president Rono Dutta said yesterday. The carrier also reached an agreement with the FAA to fly faster at lower altitudes on routes of less than 500 miles out of O'Hare.
• Rep. James Oberstar (D-Minn.), ranking member on the House Transportation Committee, introduced a bill that would give the Transportation Dept. greater authority to oversee the business and marketing practices of the major airlines and intervene when those practices result in reduced competition or unreasonably high fares for consumers. Oberstar said he opposes the pending United/US Airways merger, which he feels will spur other mergers and eventually produce three "mega" airlines that would control at least 70% of scheduled revenue passenger miles. The bill, called the Airline Competition Preservation Act, would grant the DOT oversight of air carrier pricing, anticompetitive responses to new-entrant competition and other practices considered unfair.
• Senator Harry Reid, D-Nev., introduced a bill that would provide airline passengers with enforceable service guarantees. The bill, crafted in cooperation with ASTA and supported by Consumers Union, also would allow passengers to use hidden-city tickets without penalty and sue airlines in state court. The bill would require airlines to give passengers "timely" explanations of flight delays or diversions.
• Sun Country Airlines launched an around-the-clock telephone reservations center in Bloomington (MN) to streamline direct ticket sales for the carrier. Previously, Sun Country's reservations were handled by reservation centers operated elsewhere by La Macchia, whose principal business is The Mark Travel Corp. of Milwaukee. The new reservations center in Bloomington is a Mark Travel enterprise. Sun Country officials believe the center will enhance the airline's reservations service.
• The DOT yesterday red comment on its proposed rulemaking on CRSs, saying it wants help in deciding whether to expand the rules to cover airline distribution over the Internet. It also wants help in deciding in whether the rules can or should cover CRSs no longer controlled or majority-owned by the airlines, as is now the case with Sabre and Galileo. On both issues, the DOT also needs to determine whether it has the legal authority to do so.
• TWA said it will make Los Angeles its second "focus city" with new and expanded service, including - by DOT approval - the launch of the only nonstop service to Washington's Reagan National Sept. 10. St. Louis is the airline's first focus city; TWA plans to announce another focus city in the next 11 months. The carrier also intends to bring at least 33 regional jets into service and initiate service to Mississippi.
• WORLDSPAN introduced an automated tool that reissues domestic airline tickets when itinerary changes are made. Appropriately, Worldspan calls the product Automated Reissues. The CRS said the system compares the traveler's original and revised itineraries and calculates the new air fare, including additional charges, refunds or penalty fees. The product is being marketed to airlines that issue paper or electronic tickets for domestic flights. Worldspan said Delta, Northwest and TWA are using Automated Reissues.

International

• United, Delta and Northwest yesterday received tentative DOT approval Thursday to serve Istanbul under code-share arrangements with third-country carriers. United plans to offer the service with Lufthansa via Frankfurt, Delta with Air France via Paris, and Northwest with KLM via Amsterdam. Currently, only Delta and Turkish Airlines provide scheduled service between the U.S. and Turkey.

Hotel

• Staybridge Suites by Holiday Inn, the Bass extended-stay brand, set a goal of doubling its U.S. portfolio by the end of the year. The chain currently numbers 16 properties; it hopes to have as many as 35 by 2001. Another 50 hotels are in the development pipeline. The brand also is moving into international markets, with plans to develop properties in Canada (one willin Toronto next month), Mexico and Brazil. Bass recently announced a mid-2002ng of a 356-suite hotel in Sao Paulo, Brazil.
• American hotels showed an occupancy rate of 67.7% in the second quarter of 2000, approximately 2% higher than the same period in 1999, according to Smith Travel Research, a Hendersonville, Tenn.-based firm that tracks the lodging industry. Room rate growth was also robust, with a climb of more than 5% to $84.67, and revenue per available room shot up more than 7% to $57.28. The results are due, in part, to a slowdown in room supply growth. Supply grew only 3% in the quarter, down from a 4.2% rate in the second quarter of 1999. Room demand increased 5% during the quarter, nearly double last year's growth rate.

Car

• The Hertz Corp. said it was increasing rental rates by $3 a day to offset inflation and rising interest rates and wages. Weekly rates also are being hiked: a $10 increase for reservations made more than three weeks in advance and $20 for bookings less than three weeks before rental.
• Budget International, a subsidiary of Budget Rent a Car, introduced its Fastbreak expedited rental service to its locations in the U.K. Fastbreak, which has been in the U.S. rental market since 1998, will replace the Budget Express program. Heathrow is the first airport to get the paperless program, and it will soon appear at six other U.K. airports: London Gatwick, London Stansted, Birmingham, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester. Fastbreak also will be available at five downtown locations, one each in Edinburgh, Glasgow and Manchester, and two in London. The U.K. isn't the only European country on the slate: The program soon will hit France, Germany, Switzerland and Austria, and the company said Fastbreak will reach the Netherlands, Spain and Ireland later this year. In the U.S., Fastbreak is up and running at more than 90 airport locations.

Technology

• Travelers with Sprint PCS Internet-ready phones now can access real-time Northwest Airlines flight, gate status and frequent flier information. The deal linking the carrier and Sprint also enables Northwest customers who regularly access information from Northwest's Net site [nwa.com] can access flight information through the Sprint PCS
• WORLDSPAN and QPAX.COM, a New York-based company that provides information delivery systems for travel suppliers, are teaming up to launch an e-mail service that will be marketed to agencies that use the CRS. The service is targeted to go into effect in the last quarter of the year. According Sue Powers, senior VP and GM of worldwide e-commerce at Worldspan, the e-mails will contain destination-specific news and weather, real-time flight data and information about local restaurants and entertainment venues. Agencies' commercial clients will be able to access the information through a PC or wireless device.

Industry Articles