Reuters | Latest Financial News / Full News Coverage: "'The corporate travel space is just now waking up to technology. What we view as our competition are the big corporate travel folks,' said Matt Hulett, president of Expedia Corporate Travel, a sister unit of popular Web site Expedia.com (http://www.expedia.com), which works solely with corporations.
Orbitz and Sabre Holdings Travelocity have similar corporate programs. Expedia, a unit of InterActive, is the biggest of the three with more than 1,500 customers. Traditional companies like American Express also offer online booking...
Expedia plans to offer hotel rooms at discounts almost as deep as available on Expedia.com. But the new program, Expedia Corporate Rates, will not carry big cancellation fees, will offer loyalty points that hotels have virtually quit giving to customers who book on consumer sites like Expedia.com, and will include extras, potentially including free local phone calls.
The system is designed to work like the consumer program, which lets Expedia mark up prices from hotels and pocket the difference. Web sites can also negotiate a percentage discount for customers and then take a commission off the hotel price, which is usually less lucrative.
The Web companies also are hoping they will be able to find a new market in small companies that cannot afford to hire a travel manager or spend time negotiating special rates with hotels and other suppliers.
Suh said that he was paying Expedia more than traditional commission rates of 10 percent, but giving Expedia less room to profit than in the consumer model, which across the industry has profit margins of around 18 percent for Web sites"
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