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Technology Stocks : IFLY - travel sales on the web pure play -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: lee west who wrote (3657)	1/6/1999 11:05:00 AM
From: M.R. Davis	Respond to of 4761

Morning to all longs..... been away with preparations for impending new member of family - and telephone dysfunction much of yesterday (thank you so much Bell Atlantic - feel blind with out an internet connection). Painful to watch the descent over the past few days. And of course feel like a fool for not selling warrants at 9 or 10 and buying back triple the quantity today. IMO - warrants are a great bargain now - but be wary at the higher prices (as some of you have seen the leverage works both ways). This is not a pump and dump by any stretch of the imagination. IFLY has a very solid business operation. Earnings will be significantly enhanced by the website. Estimates of increased agent efficiency are anywhere from 2x to 6x - do your own calculations and see what that shows (Why more efficient? Transaction time is significantly reduced as customers enter their own personal information and itinerary - also very strong indications that agents can handle more than one customer at a time.) IMO the biggest problem is very weak PR from the company (hardly the pump and dump!!!). The PR releases have failed to mention the greatest strengths of the IRIS website. Why? I do not understand. Perhaps they do not yet feel ready to shout their strengths from the rooftops. Perhaps they are waiting to get the backlog of registrants into IRIS and then will implement the instant registration (instead of sending an email). The PR release about the website that went out on Friday (and repeated Monday) was so weak that the condensed version on Bloomberg failed to mention that it was an interactive website and just said it was a new website where you could leave your details and someone would call you back! (Anyone post a link for this?) Problem is they are writing the PR themselves instead of getting a company to handle it. Apparently the sell off on Monday and Tuesday has been driven very much a registered shareholder who was a former member of Joseph Stevens (the company that 800 Travel Systems took over)- he is not an Insider - he decided to sell his holding on Monday, terrible timing, and there was nothing the company could do about it. If Simarx would post I think he has more info on this. Still long - and licking wounds! Busy days ahead with work and birth... Mark

To: lee west who wrote (3657)	1/6/1999 11:24:00 AM
From: M.R. Davis	Respond to of 4761

IFLY longs who are waiting to test IRIS. Here are some screen shots that give you an idea of how it looks and works: members.tripod.com (initial chat screen) members.tripod.com (chat w/itinerary) members.tripod.com (chat w/itinerary) You still have to try to believe the difference this makes to the experience of pricing tickets online. The IFLYinfo site itself is a great place to do research from: members.tripod.com You have links to most official information (no S1 though!) and some of the clearest, most perceptive posts on the message boards - including full explanations of warrants and many testimonials from those who have used the site. Mark

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