GetThere Powers Online Travel Procurement for New American Express Corporate Travel System
Creates Significant Base of New Corporations to Connect with GetThere Marketplace
MENLO PARK, Calif., June 12 / In a move that will expand the volume of transactions flowing through the recently introduced GetThere Marketplace(TM), GetThere.com® GTHR, today announced that the American Express® Corporate Travel Online (CTO) system, powered by GetThere, has completed an intensive pilot program at selected American Express customer sites, including R.J. Reynolds.
American Express is selling and implementing CTO, as well as managing fulfillment for customer bookings, while GetThere provides the technical infrastructure to process all CTO transactions. Through this relationship, GetThere can offer customized services to American Express' Corporate Services group customer base that includes more than 70 percent of the Fortune 500 and tens of thousands of small- and mid-sized companies. GetThere will continue to independently offer its own booking system that is already in use at more than 100 major corporate sites, and that works with any major agency, global distribution system and enterprise application.
"The introduction of CTO marks the most significant milestone in our relationship with American Express to date, giving us the ability to add a new base of corporate customers to the GetThere Marketplace," said Gadi Maier, president and CEO of GetThere. "More importantly, we believe this solution could help accelerate the use of online booking in the industry by providing corporate employees a highly-integrated process for booking travel online."
"This has been an incredible effort on the part of GetThere and American Express to offer corporations a sophisticated, yet easy-to-use solution for online booking," said Scott Scovel, vice president and general manager of Interactive Travel for American Express Corporate Services Interactive. "Our pilot tests provide evidence that this effort has paid off, and we look forward to working with GetThere to provide our corporate customers the opportunity to take advantage of the Internet."
Additional detail is available in a related announcement issued today by American Express.
The GetThere Marketplace
The GetThere Marketplace has the largest base of corporate travel buyers and leading travel suppliers of any Internet-based B2B travel marketplace. It provides comprehensive online booking to corporate employees by connecting them with suppliers of travel services, such as air, hotel, rail and car rental companies. The GetThere Supplier Network enrolls major travel suppliers as direct participants in the GetThere Marketplace. The members of the Supplier Network are working with GetThere to develop direct connect solutions that further improve booking speed, enable new services and content, and provide economic efficiencies to corporate buyers and suppliers. The GetThere Marketplace provides comprehensive, fully integrated booking capabilities for corporate travelers, travel departments and supporting corporate travel agencies.
About GetThere
GetThere operates the world's largest Internet marketplace focused on business-to-business travel services. GetThere's systems are used to provide online travel procurement to employees at leading corporations such as Boeing, Chevron, Cisco, Cox Communications, Lucent, MetLife, Nike and Xerox. GetThere also powers online travel sites for leading airlines, including Alitalia, All Nippon Airways, America West, British Airways, Northwest Airlines, TWA and United Airlines. GetThere can be found on the Web at
NOTE: GetThere, the GetThere logo, and GetThere Marketplace are trademarks of
Information in this press release that involves GetThere's expectations, beliefs, hopes, plans, intentions or strategies are forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. All such forward-looking statements are based upon information available to GetThere as of the date of the release, and GetThere assumes no obligation to update these statements. These statements are not guarantees of future performance, and actual results could differ materially from current expectations. Factors that could cause actual results to differ materially from those in the forward-looking statements are described in GetThere's reports and documents filed from time to time with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including GetThere's Form 10-K filed on April 21, 2000.
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