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Hotel Booking The Professional Golfers Association today pulled out of a plan to build a golf resort atop the Edwards Aquifer, the main source of drinking water for San Antonio, after opponents gathered enough petitions to force a citywide referendum on the proposal in November.

Groople (www.groople.com), the leader in group travel planning, has partnered with Go10000, a travel focused development and hosting firm, to bring to market a new group collaboration site for the travel space. GroopVine will provide the solution to the complex communication and booking problems group travel planning can create. Enhancing the online travel space by combining the key elements of social networking such as invitations, forums, messaging, photos and video posting, with the best in online travel booking, GroopVine is the only place for group travelers to shop, plan and book together online.

Travel Agency "The P.G.A. does not wish to be involved in an issue that is creating so much controversy and divisiveness within the San Antonio community," wrote Jim L. Awtrey, chief executive of the golfing association, in a letter to the project's developer, the Lumbermen's Investment Corporation.

Groople, the leading online group travel planning and booking site, announces the launch of an exciting travel and social networking tool, offering an integrated solution for the challenges of planning and booking group travel. GroopVine will allow users to create their own personalized trip page to plan, create, share, shop and buy travel with their entire group's input every step of the way. Providing helpful tools from event schedules and suggested itineraries to RSS feeds and online surveys, GroopVine makes group travel planning fun, collaborative and easy.

Cheap Hotel In response to the P.G.A.'s withdrawal, the San Antonio City Council voted this afternoon to repeal a development agreement that it approved in April to allow Lumbermen's to build the elite golf resort. The development, on 2,800 acres north of the city, would have sat atop the aquifer's "recharge zone," a fragile area where rainwater seeps through limestone to refill the aquifer. The agreement would also have allowed Lumbermen's to create a special taxing district that would have allowed the development company to recoup as much as $52 million of its investment.

"Groople and Avis Budget Group continue to lead innovation in the industry with the launch of our group rental car product. The rapid growth in booking travel online and the size of the group travel segment is driving demand for group based travel tools, " said Mike Stacy, chief executive officer of Groople. "We have demonstrated our leadership in group hotels, breaking tool for cars, which will make their travel planning and booking much easier."

Flight Booking For months, the golf proposal had been the most divisive political issue in San Antonio. Critics attacked the plan on several fronts: that it posed a threat to contaminate the aquifer; that the taxing district represented a giveaway to a private developer;, and that hotel workers at the resort would not be paid a "living wage." Advocates said the project had strict environmental controls and represented the best use of land that otherwise would likely become a massive residential development.

Groople In the News Travelocity Teams with Groople to Offer Group Hotel Bookings New shopping tools added to Travelocity's hotel booking engine let travelers book 5+ rooms in a single reservation SOUTHLAKE, Texas and DENVER (February 1, 2005) Planning this summer's faraway family reunion Or maybe you're a coach needing a bunch of rooms for that upcoming youth tournament If so, you'll want to check out new functionality on Travelocity that makes planning and booking group travel a snap. Today, Travelocity announced an agreement with Groople Inc., a leading provider of online group travel bookings that gives Travelocity customers a specialized groups section with discounted hotel rates, group content and new planning features that are unavailable on other travel sites.

Travel Agent The three-month petition drive to force a vote on the project was led by the city's most established grass-roots organizations, Communities Organized for Public Service, known as COPS, and Metro Alliance, as well as some newer environmental groups.

8mong many firsts for the group market, the new technology platform enables consumers to do something that other sites haven k allowed to book travel and accommodations for more than five rooms in a single online session. Featuring more than 56, 000 hotels, including 7, time group rates, Groople is primed to become the industry largest automated solution for unmanaged group leisure travel, a market estimated at $18 billion to $24 billion. Under its hosted inventory and commission models, Groople generates group bookings niche by niche for hotels and plans to add air, car, cruise, bus and rail later this year.

Hotel Chicago "To us, it's a victory," said Andy Sarabia, a member of COPS's executive committee member.

Online Booking William T. Kaufman, a lawyer and lobbyist for Lumbermen's, said the P.G.A. withdrew because the controversy was causing negative publicity. But Mr. Kaufman said the P.G.A. remained interested in developing a resort in San Antonio, if the various groups could reach a deal.

Travel Health Insurance By Jim Yardley
New York Times - 8/2/2002

Topic: Water

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