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Press Release
For Immediate
Release
Contacts:
MARITZ TRAVEL COMPANY, GTM, AND TRAVEL ANALYTICS ANNOUNCE LICENSING AGREEMENT
Maritz Travel Company and Travel Analytics, Inc. have joined forces to meet the rapidly growing need for fast, flexible, automated analytical support by offering
TANGOTM, Travel Analytic's commercially available airline partnering tool.
The licensing agreement, effective as of January 1, 2000, will allow Maritz GTM to be the first mega-travel agency to offer
TANGOTM to its clients who want to significantly improve their ability to negotiate contracts with their airline suppliers.
Scott Gillespie, Principal of Travel Analytics, invested the past 12 months developing the software titled TANGOTM. The tool, the first of its kind in the industry, has no ownership ties to any airline or travel agency, therefore producing an unbiased assessment of each airline's value to a corporate customer. According to Gillespie, "The system is very fast, and analyzes airline supplier options and rapidly calculates potential savings. For companies with multi-million air spends, the annual airline bid process can be shortened considerably. We can run the entire process - data collection, input, TANGO analysis, and output reports - back to the client in as little as three days."
Jack O'Neill, Corporate Vice President of Airline Programs and Marketing Services for Maritz-GTM Travel, noted, "It's a great product…flexible both in terms of scope and content. TANGO helps a client factor in key city pair, airline profile, and travel policy factors that our clients need today. We've done these analyses for several years, but its time to upgrade the process. There are clients whose requirements, either in terms of turn time or the volume of analysis, that will be much better served by an automated program like TANGO."
Gillespie added, "We're excited that Maritz Travel Company and GTM worldwide will be able to utilize TANGO. The response in the marketplace thus far has been very strong and our association with Maritz-GTM will help us continue expanding our suite of analytical tools for the corporate travel buyer."
Important to both companies is that Travel Analytics is an independent third-party. O'Neill stated, "Maritz' marketing strategy and operating practice is that we're driven by our clients' interests -- we take a "best of breed" approach in the marketplace. Our job is to help our clients understand various products across the travel management spectrum and to help them choose the best solution. TANGO's a great example of an analytical tool that we want to be able to offer our clients for that singular task. It helps our clients and, in our estimation, helps us and our mutual airline partners design true, "win-win" situations. We've been looking at the marketplace since last year for such a product and we had considered building it ourselves. However, we believe licensing TANGO is the most cost-effective solution available now for us and for our clients."
TANGO - Product Overview
TANGO was designed with some of the major challenges in mind facing today's corporate travel managers. By tying into current airline schedules TANGO evaluates each airline's fair market share, which is its ability to cover the client's city pairs. It then creates and tests a number of possible preferred airline combinations. These scenarios quantify the revenues that airlines can gain - or lose - in market share shift. Finally, TANGO calculates the true economic value of multiple airline bids and assists both the corporate client and the airlines in agreeing to aggressive but attainable market share goals.
TANGO provides an easy way for a travel manager to compare the value of airline bids. It's not a back-office or mid-office system; it's a simple, straightforward, analytical tool. It readily factors in new airline proposals and the prospective economic impact of contract changes.
For Maritz clients using TANGO, their data will be supplied electronically from NorthStarSM, Maritz' data warehouse and global reporting system.
"It is this type of tool that will help corporations do a better job of analyzing proposals," said Monisa Cline, Managing Director of Corporate Sales for Continental Airlines.
About Maritz Travel Company
Maritz Travel Company, a $1.6 billion company headquartered in St. Louis and the largest division of Maritz Inc., manages comprehensive travel programs for corporations throughout the United States and around the world. Maritz is one of America's largest travel companies and the world's largest provider of group travel awards, business meetings and special events. As a majority owner of GTM-A Maritz International Company with annual revenues in excess of $9 billion (USD), Maritz provides global travel management with over 1,250 locations in over 40 countries.
About Travel Analytics
Travel Analytics, founded in 1999, is the leading provider of travel sourcing software. Based in the Cleveland area, Travel Analytics serves a growing list of Fortune® 500 clients. More information about Travel Analytics and TANGO™ is available at
www.travelanalytics.com.
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