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DALLAS, July 20, 1998 - Pegasus
Systems, Inc. (Nasdaq: PEGS) today announced the travel industry's
first incentive program to encourage travel agents to use the Internet
to book hotel rooms.
Beginning today, Pegasus Systems will pay travel agencies that are members
of its HCC (Hotel Clearing Corporation) commission processing service a
$1 incentive fee for each net hotel reservation booked by the travel agency
through Pegasus' popular Internet site, TravelWeb(R) (http://www.trave1web.com).
Pegasus Systems is a leading provider of hotel industry electronic commerce
and transaction processing solutions.
The "Bonus Buck" reward is in addition to the standard commission that the agency usually receives from the hotel. TravelWeb(R) is the first "mega- travel site" to offer such an incentive to travel agents. Since launching online booking in 1995, TravelWeb(R) has always offered all travel agents the ability to book and append their agency identification number (ARC/IATA/TIDS) into TravelWeb's(R) reservation form for full commission credit. To promote usage of the site among travel agents, Pegasus is offering travel agencies that participate in its HCC service an additional revenue boost -- a "Bonus Buck." Today, more then 75,000 travel agency locations worldwide subscribe to the HCC service and make more than 1.8 million hotel bookings per month. Although TravelWeb(R) is used primarily by individual leisure travelers, the site has experienced a recent growth in travel agency bookings. Travel Weekly magazine's U.S. Travel Agency Survey indicates that more than 50 percent of its travel agency readers are linked to the Internet. "It's estimated that more than 50 percent of travel agency hotel bookings are still made via telephone. As more and more agencies gain Internet access, we hope to move those agents off the phone and onto the Internet," said John F. Davis III, president and chief executive officer, Pegasus Systems. "TravelWeb(R) can be the perfect tool for the travel agent that typically relies on catalogs and brochures for hotel information, or cannot get through to the hotel's 1-800 number or central reservations office to make a booking. It's ideal for smaller agencies or home-based agents who do not have access to the global distribution systems (GDS) for electronic bookings," Davis continued. Considered one of the Internet's top "mega-travel sites," TravelWeb(R) provides online hotel and airline reservations, currency conversion, weather services, interactive mapping and more. TravelWeb(R) contains comprehensive information on more than 21,000 hotels in 151 countries, with the majority of the hotels available for secure online booking. "By viewing photographs and reading detailed descriptions of the hotel properties, the travel agent who uses TravelWeb(R) is armed with better information to sell hotel rooms to their customers," Davis said. Travelers and travel agents anywhere in the world can conduct a quick search on TravelWeb(R) to find hotels that meet certain user-defined criteria, such as 24-hour room service, babysitting services or handicapped rooms/facilities. Additionally, TravelWeb's(R) technology assures secure online transactions for credit card-guaranteed reservations, 24 hours a day. According to market research firm Datamonitor, travel will be the single largest category of products sold over the Internet in the next century. It expects that the travel industry will account for 35 percent of all online sales by the year 2002. Company Information Pegasus Systems, Inc. (http://pegasus.thisco.com) provides global electronic
commerce and transaction processing solutions to hotels, travel agencies,
meetings and convention planners, corporate travel departments and Internet
sites/services around the world via its services that include: THISCO(TM),
HCC(TM) (http://www.hccnet.com), TravelWeb(R), NetBooker(TM) and Pegasus
IQ(TM). Pegasus Systems has its headquarters in Dallas and offices
in London. The company's stock is traded on the Nasdaq National Market
under the symbol PEGS.
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Also See:
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Las Vegas Reservation Systems to Join Pegasus Systems' TravelWeb / June 1998 |