travel, hotel and booking Information

Travelocity improves biz response

Hotel Booking Travelocity is selecting ILOG JRules as part of a new initiative to make their IT infrastructure more agile.

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 Agency As part of a previous enterprise-wide license agreement signed with Sabre Holdings, ILOG JRules will be used to improve Travelocity's business response time, enhance the user experience, and reduce time-to-market for Travelocity's products and services.

In addition to more than 60, 000 hotels and six top cruise lines, Groople offers group bookings for air, car, bus and rail. In February, Groople partnered with Travelocity, allowing broader distribution of Groople group rates and inventory on Travelocity.com when users select more than 5 hotel rooms. The past year has also brought partnerships with Choice Hotels International, Cendant Hotels, Best Western and La Quinta Hotels, increasing Groople inventory and thus providing even more hotel options for groups booking through the Groople website and call center.

Cheap Hotel Travelocity plans to deploy ILOG JRules across its travel planning products and applications, capturing and managing business policies previously written in Java- and C-based software code.

Travel agents obtain some of their information from the same sources as online booking sites such as Orbitz and Travelocity. They also receive daily emails and faxes with new specials from resorts and hotels that may not be published on the internet. Travel agents can also call a place directly to see if they can work out other kinds of special deals for you, something an online site can’t do.

Flight Booking By liberating business policies from Travelocity's IT systems and storing them in a BRMS, where developers, business analysts and even business users can access them, Travelocity can modify them more quickly, improving the speed and quality of the company's decision-making processes.

"Combining Groople's expertise into Travelocity's hotel offerings is another commitment we are making to our customers' varying needs as they research and plan their trips on Travelocity, regardless of the size, " said Josh Feuerstein Travelocity's vice president hotels. "We know that coordinating an event, family trip, reunion, wedding or other group is more complex than a single hotel booking and we are very pleased to now offer such a compelling product to our customers."

Travel Agent With ILOG JRules deployed, Travelocity will roll out new products and services faster, and can deliver fine-tuned special offers based on customer preferences, among other usability enhancements.

"Groople is proud to work with the online travel industry leader Travelocity in helping to meet the varying needs of group travelers, " said Groople Chief Executive Officer David Loy. "We estimate that unmanaged leisure groups, known at the SMERF market (Social, Military, Education, Religious, Fraternal) book $18 billion a year in travel and we are excited that Travelocity's distribution and reach is now bringing automated group bookings to the masses."

Hotel Chicago "Travelocity plays in a white-hot competitive environment," said Barry Vandevier, Travelocity's chief technology officer. "We selected ILOG JRules as part of an ongoing effort to be more agile to changing market conditions and to improve the usability of the Travelocity site."

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