Anyone see this article on BBN? I like the quote from Worldspan's guy. Check it out:
Published Friday, March 31, 2000, in the Miami Herald
ByeByeNow.com has big promises for travel industry
BY JACK REJTMAN
jrejtman@herald.com
"This is a huge market that is fragmented. No one has taken a great position yet. I think
ByeByeNow.com has as good a
chance as anybody right now because there really isn't anybody in the leisure market."
-- LORRAINE SILEO, Internet travel market analyst
With 12 Emmy Awards to his name, NBC executive Guy Pepper
could pretty much script his own part when he decided to leave television and enter the Internet
job market.
So when Pepper chose from among four offers to join
Pompano Beach's ByeByeNow.com as chief executive in January, industry watchers took
notice.
One month later, the little startup making big promises
to transform leisure travel announced another coup: Global reservation system provider
Worldspan
-- jointly owned by Delta, Trans World and Northwest
airlines
-- agreed to take a multimillion-dollar stake and roll out
ByeByeNow.com's Internet tools
to its 18,500 travel agents.
In early March came another big hire: ByeByeNow.com named
Douglas Ziemer as
chief operating officer. Former president of the Americas
at Carlson Wagonlit
Travel, a global company with more than $9.5 billion in
annual sales, Ziemer
will guide ByeByeNow.com's Internet strategy for more
than 300 franchises
nationwide.
ByeByeNow.com will need that experience as it attempts to
carve out a niche
in the highly fragmented leisure travel market, which
Jupiter Communications
estimated to be $4.29 billion in 1999 and to exceed $16.6
billion by 2003.
That niche, Pepper said, is providing customers leisure
travel packages and
premium customer service across virtually any medium --
phone, Internet, face
to face or fax.
``We do vacation travel,' said Pepper, formerly senior
director and special
advisor to the president of NBC News. ``That's who we
are. That's our niche
and we will be laser focused.'
Lighthouse Point entrepreneur Tom Conlan co-founded
ByeByeNow.com in May with
Investment Management of America, a venture capital
incubator in Sarasota.
The company began acquiring travel franchises and hiring
key staff soon
after.
``We think what counts is finding partners who will be
survivors and winners
in this space,' said Worldspan Chief Executive Paul
Blackney, whose company
also powers the travel component of online discounter
PriceLine.com.
``Clearly, we think ByeByeNow has the technology and the
management team to
be a winner.'
ByeByeNow.com now employs 220 people. Many, like Pepper
and Ziemer, boast
impressive credentials. The company also has assembled a
board of directors
that reads like a Who's Who listing of media and travel
corporations.
Leisure packages and tours are the fastest growing
segment of the travel
industry.
As airlines have slashed commissions during the past
three years, about 10
percent of the nation's 30,300 travel agencies have
closed their doors,
according to Airlines Reporting Corp. Surviving agencies
have increasingly
relied on leisure travel to stay afloat, a 1998 U.S.
Travel Agency Survey
reports. The American Society of Travel Agents forecasts
that trend will
continue, even as more and more travel agencies begin to
market online.
Internet heavyweights Expedia, Travelocity and Preview
Travel now book more
than 40 percent of online travel, Gomez Advisors reports.
Through
acquisitions, Expedia and Travelocity, which has
announced plans to buy
Preview Travel, are expected to remain dominant through
2001.
But Expedia and Travelocity primarily book low-margin
commodities such as
airline tickets, hotel rooms and car rentals.
ByeByeNow.com plans to focus on
packages and tours -- a strategy that pits it more
against the likes of
Travel-by-us.com.
ByeByeNow.com is among the first in a new wave of
companies that fuse
traditional business practices with the Internet, said
Kate Rice, information
services director at PhoCusWright, a strategy and
research company that
specializes in Internet travel. Unlike Travelocity and
Expedia, ByeByeNow.com
built its business plan around providing high-end
customer service -- rather
than adding customer service to an existing Internet
model.
``Their whole game plan is to have the same information
available to the
consumer across different media whether through a
conventional travel agency
or over the phone using a call center,' Rice said. ``The
whole point being
to be wherever a customer is more comfortable.'
Fellow PhoCusWright analyst Lorraine Sileo said it's too
early to say which
online travel strategy will be most successful
``This is a huge market that is fragmented. No one has
taken a great position
yet,' Sileo said. ``I think ByeByeNow.com has as good a
chance as anybody
right now because there really isn't anybody in the
leisure market.'
ByeByeNow.com's current Web site enables customers to
view an array of global
travel packages from cruises to skiing and book the trip
online. But the
company promises to roll out major enhancements in early
May.
Besides streaming video, the company plans to enable
customers to talk with
and see customer service agents online, to store and
track customer
preferences, and to tailor vacations according to
preferences and buying
habits.
Prospective clients will be able to chat with other
travelers about vacations
before booking their trips and to share experiences when
they return. Clients
who want to talk to an agent in person will be routed to
neighborhood
franchisesand agents with expertise that matches the
customer's profile,
regardless of whether the agent works at the call center,
a franchise or from
her house.
ByeByeNow.com also plans to produce a travel television
show for cable
viewers that will air on UShopTV.com, an Internet and
home-shopping
television company in which ByeByeNow.com owns a 30
percent stake.
So far, Investment Management of America has financed
most of ByeByeNow.com's
growth. If Worldspan invests, as expected, within coming
weeks, ByeByeNow.com
will have raised a total of $33 million. The company is
shopping for an
investment banker to raise another $35 million to carry
it to a planned
initial public offering this fall.
IMA Chairman Gerry Parker, who served as chief executive
until Pepper was
hired, said ByeByeNow.com should have no problem raising
that money. Parker
said he has had to turn private investors away.
Bob Dickinson, president of Carnival Cruise Lines, joined
ByeByeNow.com's
board last month and will be compensated with company
shares and a modest
salary.
But the president of the world's largest cruise line said
he would have
worked for free to learn first-hand how the new online
travel model will
work. Only a few years ago, Dickinson obtained training
to become a certified
travel counselor to better understand the workings of
traditional travel
agencies, which account for 95 percent of cruise
bookings.
``Ten or 15 years ago, the travel industry was fairly
sleepy. Now it's
getting really exciting,' Dickinson said. ``We've been
watching the growth
of e-commerce opportunities to merchandise travel, and
ByeByeNow is at the
forefront.' |
