IFLY - travel sales on the web pure play Message Board

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Technology Stocks : IFLY - travel sales on the web pure play

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To: lee west who wrote (3657)	1/6/1999 11:35:00 AM
From: M.R. Davis	Read Replies (2) of 4761

Here's another good testimonial on IRIS (from Yahoo): Tried Iris yesterday by: fatcat1999 24876 of 24899 The site was easy and fast to use. Me and a friend went to Yahoo travel first, got a price from Boston to Vegas for about $460 a ticket. Then went to Iris and got a price of $408. the site was much faster than I imagined in that my questions were answered in seconds by the agent. Not only did it cost less, but it was fun to do the transaction compared to typical internet purchases. In the long term, assuming the IFLY site can get the same exposure as say Preview Travel for example, and people become aware this service is available, who would ever use the Preview Travel site if they had to pick one or the other. Even the shorts who have actually tried IRIS would probably admit that if they had to go on the net to buy a ticket would, they would use the IFLY site. Its just as fast, cheaper in my case (and probably in many cases), and is more enjoyable.Common sense says if management can get the people to the site once through advertising, the site will keep them there. It may not happen overnight but it will happen. I am long on this stock and have been since April so I am obviously biased, but I would never ever again buy a ticket online without making IRIS one of the places I check, if not my only place -- and I will do this even after I sell at some point. Long on IFLYfatcat BTW - comments that any programmer with some HTML can throw this together show a deep ignorance of technical matters and business situations. Tying back end databases into websites is tricky - moving real time transactions across the databases is nasty. You've got financial transactions happening into IFLY's own database and into SABRE - SABRE inventory also has to be appropriately updated. Very complex stuff to pull off. Can other companies copy it? Of course. But they also need an efficient call center (IFLY's is led by Constance Norris who has 18 years experience with call centers and reservation systems - especially SABRE). Also you need to have good relationships with your suppliers - who have to agree that commissions will be travel agent based and not Internet based. Most importantly you need fantastic prices - IFLY has just about the best prices for many routes (some routes they can't compete on and will acknowledge that). Add on top of that the IFLY negotiated override commissions dependant on high volume (first level of overrides are only just starting to kick in). Can that all be copied? Sure - but competitors will take at least a year to catch up IMO. Mark

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