Travelocity
Encyclopedia
Travelocity is an online travel agency
Travel agency
A travel agency is a retail business that sells travel related products and services to customers on behalf of suppliers such as airlines, car rentals, cruise lines, hotels, railways, sightseeing tours and package holidays that combine several products...

 and wholly owned subsidiary
Subsidiary
A subsidiary company, subsidiary, or daughter company is a company that is completely or partly owned and wholly controlled by another company that owns more than half of the subsidiary's stock. The subsidiary can be a company, corporation, or limited liability company. In some cases it is a...

 of Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...

 Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake Partners
Silver Lake is a US-based private equity firm focused on leveraged buyout and growth capital investments in technology, technology-enabled and related industries...

 and Texas Pacific Group
Texas Pacific Group
TPG Capital is one of the largest private equity investment firms globally, focused on leveraged buyout, growth capital and leveraged recapitalization investments in distressed companies and turnaround situations. TPG also manages investment funds specializing in growth capital, venture capital,...

 in March 2007. Travelocity is based in Southlake, Texas
Southlake, Texas
Southlake is a city in northeast Tarrant and southeast Denton counties, Texas. As of the 2010 census it had a population of 26,575. A suburb of Fort Worth and Dallas, Southlake is known for exemplary public schools, Southlake Town Square, and Carroll High School's 7-time state champion football...

, with additional offices in New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...

, San Francisco, San Antonio and abroad.

According to Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...

, Travelocity is the sixth-largest travel agency in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 and the second-largest online travel agency. In addition to its primary US consumer site, Travelocity operates a full-service business agency, Travelocity Business, and comparable websites in Canada
Canada
Canada is a North American country consisting of ten provinces and three territories. Located in the northern part of the continent, it extends from the Atlantic Ocean in the east to the Pacific Ocean in the west, and northward into the Arctic Ocean...

, Germany
Germany
Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a federal parliamentary republic in Europe. The country consists of 16 states while the capital and largest city is Berlin. Germany covers an area of 357,021 km2 and has a largely temperate seasonal climate...

, France
France
The French Republic , The French Republic , The French Republic , (commonly known as France , is a unitary semi-presidential republic in Western Europe with several overseas territories and islands located on other continents and in the Indian, Pacific, and Atlantic oceans. Metropolitan France...

, the Scandinavia
Scandinavia
Scandinavia is a cultural, historical and ethno-linguistic region in northern Europe that includes the three kingdoms of Denmark, Norway and Sweden, characterized by their common ethno-cultural heritage and language. Modern Norway and Sweden proper are situated on the Scandinavian Peninsula,...

n countries, India
India
India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

 and the United Kingdom
United Kingdom
The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern IrelandIn the United Kingdom and Dependencies, other languages have been officially recognised as legitimate autochthonous languages under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages...

. Sister sites include lastminute.com
Lastminute.com
lastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer. The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and became an icon of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, floating at the peak of the dot com bubble and trading on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol...

 in Europe and Zuji in Asia. Other brands include World Choice Travel, a travel affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing
Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's own marketing efforts...

 program, IgoUgo
IgoUgo
IgoUgo is an online travel community and travel-planning resource. Winner of the 2004 Webby Award for “Best Travel Site in the U.S.,” IgoUgo rewards its contributing writers and photographers with "GO Points", which can be redeemed for gift cards to online retailers, frequent flyer miles and other...

, an online travel community and travel-planning resource, and AllHotels, an online hotel reservation site.

History

American Airlines began offering customer access to its electronic reservation system, SABRE
Sabre (computer system)
Sabre Global Distribution System , owned by Sabre Holdings, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines...

, in 1978 to travel agencies, and in the mid-80s on the CompuServe Information Service
CompuServe
CompuServe was the first major commercial online service in the United States. It dominated the field during the 1980s and remained a major player through the mid-1990s, when it was sidelined by the rise of services such as AOL with monthly subscriptions rather than hourly rates...

 to consumers under the "EAASY SABRE" brand name. This service was extended to America Online in the 1990s.

Travelocity was created in 1996 as a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...

, itself a subsidiary of American Airlines
American Airlines
American Airlines, Inc. is the world's fourth-largest airline in passenger miles transported and operating revenues. American Airlines is a subsidiary of the AMR Corporation and is headquartered in Fort Worth, Texas adjacent to its largest hub at Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport...

, and was run by long-time Sabre I.T.
Information technology
Information technology is the acquisition, processing, storage and dissemination of vocal, pictorial, textual and numerical information by a microelectronics-based combination of computing and telecommunications...

 executive Terrell B. "Terry" Jones. As one of the pioneers of web-based disintermediation
Disintermediation
In economics, disintermediation is the removal of intermediaries in a supply chain: "cutting out the middleman". Instead of going through traditional distribution channels, which had some type of intermediate , companies may now deal with every customer directly, for example via the Internet...

, Travelocity.com was the first website
Website
A website, also written as Web site, web site, or simply site, is a collection of related web pages containing images, videos or other digital assets. A website is hosted on at least one web server, accessible via a network such as the Internet or a private local area network through an Internet...

 that allowed consumers themselves not only to access Sabre's fare and schedule information, but also to reserve, book, and purchase tickets without the help of a travel agent or broker. In addition to airfares, the site also permits consumers to book hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises and packaged vacations.

Travelocity gained momentum after AOL's travel portal became associated with the brand in 1999. In 2000, Sabre negotiated a merger of Travelocity with another early web travel company, Preview Travel. The resulting company was independently quoted on the NASDAQ
NASDAQ
The NASDAQ Stock Market, also known as the NASDAQ, is an American stock exchange. "NASDAQ" originally stood for "National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations". It is the second-largest stock exchange by market capitalization in the world, after the New York Stock Exchange. As of...

 exchange, with Sabre continuing to own around 70 percent of the combined company's outstanding stock. In 2002, with Travelocity's fortunes suffering from competition including Expedia
Expedia
Expedia is an Internet-based travel website based in the US with localised sites for 21 countries...

 and Orbitz
Orbitz
Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. is an Internet travel company headquartered in the Citigroup Center in Near West Side, Chicago, Illinois. Through its primary web site Orbitz.com, Orbitz Worldwide enables travelers to research, plan and book a broad range of travel products, facilitating 1.5 million flight...

, Sabre consummated a tender offer
Tender offer
Tender offer is a corporate finance term denoting a type of takeover bid. The tender offer is a public, open offer or invitation by a prospective acquirer to all stockholders of a publicly traded corporation to tender their stock for sale at a specified price during a specified time, subject to...

 for the remainder of the outstanding shares in Travelocity and remerged the business into Sabre as a subsidiary. Jones left the company shortly afterward.

Also in March 2002, Travelocity acquired last minute travel specialist Site59.com
Site59.com
Site59.com was an online travel agency that aimed to make "the best deals available at the last minute." The site was launched in May 2000 by travel and tourism professionals from The Boston Consulting Group , and was further developed and backed by iFormation Group, a partnership between BCG,...

. Site59’s CEO and founder, Michelle Peluso joined Travelocity with the acquisition as senior vice president, product strategy and distribution. Peluso became Travelocity’s COO in April 2003 and was then named president and chief executive officer of Travelocity in December 2003.

In 2004, Travelocity introduced "The Roaming Gnome." Voiced by Harry Enfield, the Gnome has been a staple in Travelocity's advertising ever since. The original campaign was invented by Lisa Shimotakahara and Philip Marchington of McKinney & Silver, an advertising agency in Durham, North Carolina. The tagline, "You'll never roam alone", was written by John Guynn, a copywriter at the same agency.

In 2005, Travelocity acquired lastminute.com
Lastminute.com
lastminute.com is an online travel and leisure retailer. The company was founded by Martha Lane Fox and Brent Hoberman in 1998 and became an icon of the UK internet boom of the late 1990s, floating at the peak of the dot com bubble and trading on the London Stock Exchange under the symbol...

 to take in excess of 30 more brands under its banner in the UK.

Under Peluso’s leadership, Travelocity has developed and launched a merchant hotel business, dynamic packaging
Dynamic packaging
Dynamic packaging is a method that is becoming increasingly used in package holiday bookings that enables consumers to build their own package of flights, accommodation, and a hire car instead of a pre-defined package...

 functionality, and a private-label (ASP) distribution network, the Travelocity Partner Network. Many members of Peluso’s former management team at Site59 held senior management positions at Travelocity; namely, Jeffrey Glueck (Chief Marketing Officer
Chief marketing officer
Chief Marketing Officer is a corporate title referring to an executive responsible for various marketing activities in an organization...

), Tracey Weber (President, North America), Josh Hartmann (Chief Technology Officer) and Jonathan Perkel (Senior Vice President and General Counsel
General Counsel
A general counsel is the chief lawyer of a legal department, usually in a corporation or government department. The term is most used in the United States...

).
On January 8, 2009 the company announced that its CEO, Michelle Peluso would tender her resignation in order to get married and focus on bringing up a family, and that she is being replaced by long-time Sabre Sr. Executive, Hugh Jones.

AllHotels


AllHotels.com is an online hotel reservation site owned by Travelocity. The site was founded in 1997 by Richard Irwin, acquired by Online Travel Corporation (OTC) in 2002, and later acquired by lastminute.com in 2004. AllHotels joined the Travelocity portfolio of companies through Travelocity's acquisition of lastminute.com in 2005.

Products

AllHotels is a hotel only site where customers book online, but pay the hotel at checkout.

Travelocity Business

Travelocity Business is a full-service corporate travel agency that allows companies to plan, buy and manage their travel through its online and offline capabilities. Travelocity Business is owned by Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings
Sabre Holdings or Sabre, Inc. is an American privately held travel technology company, encompassing several brands in three global distribution system channels: travel agency, airline, and direct to consumer. These areas are serviced by TSG's three main business groups...

 and is the business arm of the online leisure travel agency Travelocity
Travelocity
Travelocity is an online travel agency and wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners and Texas Pacific Group in March 2007...

.

See also

  • Where is my Gnome?
    Where is my Gnome?
    Where is my Gnome? was a series of viral marketing ads used by Travelocity in early 2004. The ads consisted of a man named "Bill" looking for his garden gnome. On January 3, the Boston Herald and the Boston Globe had these ads on their publication. The ads were inspired by the travelling gnome prank...

    . a viral marketing
    Viral marketing
    Viral marketing, viral advertising, or marketing buzz are buzzwords referring to marketing techniques that use pre-existing social networks to produce increases in brand awareness or to achieve other marketing objectives through self-replicating viral processes, analogous to the spread of viruses...

     campaign used by Travelocity.
  • The Amazing Race
    The Amazing Race
    The Amazing Race is a reality television game show in which teams of two people, who have some form of a preexisting personal relationship, race around the world in competition with other teams...

    . U.S. sponsor.

Competitors and partners

  • Amadeus IT Group
    Amadeus IT Group
    Amadeus IT Group is a transaction processor for the global travel and tourism industry. The company is structured around two key related areas - its global distribution system and its IT Solutions business area...

  • Sabre
    Sabre (computer system)
    Sabre Global Distribution System , owned by Sabre Holdings, is used by more than 55,000 travel agencies around the world with more than 400 airlines, 88,000 hotels, 24 car rental brands, and 13 cruise lines...

  • Expedia
    Expedia
    Expedia is an Internet-based travel website based in the US with localised sites for 21 countries...

  • Orbitz
    Orbitz
    Orbitz Worldwide, Inc. is an Internet travel company headquartered in the Citigroup Center in Near West Side, Chicago, Illinois. Through its primary web site Orbitz.com, Orbitz Worldwide enables travelers to research, plan and book a broad range of travel products, facilitating 1.5 million flight...

  • Priceline
    Priceline.com
    Priceline.com is a company and a commercial website that helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related purchases such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; instead it facilitates the provision of travel services by its suppliers to its...

  • Kayak
    Kayak.com
    KAYAK is a technology company providing online travel tools through its global family of websites and mobile applications. Started by cofounders of Expedia, Orbitz, and Travelocity, KAYAK allows users to compare information from hundreds of other travel websites in one display when booking travel...

  • CheapOair
    CheapOair
    CheapOair is an online travel company established in September 2005. The company has created a branded budget travel site for US and Canadian travelers. This site offers airfares on all major and smaller airlines in North America, Central and South America, Europe, Asia, Pacific, Indian...


External links

The source of this article is wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.  The text of this article is licensed under the GFDL.
 
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