LV firms compete to book rooms on the 'Net

Online hotel reservation systems are growing as fast as Las Vegas' room count.

Four Las Vegas companies have staked a claim in developing room reservation systems on the Internet with one of them expected to expand following an initial public offering.

And a handful of other Las Vegas-based operations are using the ease of point-and-click computer operations to direct website visitors to other established room reservation systems that aren't based in town.

"It's clearly the way people will be making travel reservations in the future," said Michael Reichartz, executive vice president of privately held Travelscape.com, the city's largest Internet reservation system. "In fact, it's the way many people are making travel reservations now."

Travelscape.com has been on a roll since it was unveiled in 1998, a spinoff of the highly successful Las Vegas Reservation Systems Inc., a telephone reservation system.

Las Vegas Reservation Systems was founded in 1990 by Tim Poster, who now serves as chief executive officer of Travelscape.com. LVRS has grown at more than 30 percent a year and now books more than 300,000 room nights a year at 40 Las Vegas resorts. The company's 24-hour call center is staffed by 100 employees.

Now, the emphasis is shifting to reservations on the Internet and expanding beyond just booking rooms. Travelers can make plane reservations and buy show tickets and arrange tee times.

Company executives are the first to admit that the percentage of people who actually make reservations on the system -- the so called "look-to-book ratio" -- is low. But they're also confident that as the Internet becomes more popular, bookings will increase.

Experts say about 39 percent of the adult online population -- about 16 million people -- browses or buys travel online. Revenue from online travel is projected to grow from $911 million in 1997 to $11.7 billion in 2002.

Online reservation promoters are attempting to build interest in their websites by enhancing content. Instead of just selling hotel rooms, they're showing browsers what the rooms and hotels look like. Some are giving viewers a broad look at what's available in the entire city and using the Internet's multimedia capability to show small video clips of some of the attractions in action.

Some online reservation systems are forming alliances with other companies to provide compelling content. Travelscape.com, for example, has aligned itself with the Las Vegas Review-Journal's lasvegas.com website.

Reservations Plus (www.resplus.com), a locally based reservations web site that is a division of an Arlington, Va., company that books reservations for 22 cities, provides its own content. So does the Hotel Reservations Network (www.hoteldiscounts.com).

Reservations Plus prides itself in its quick linking "hot buttons" that download information to the company's call center.

"After reviewing hotel availability, surfers can simply hit a hot button and ask for information about other services such as wedding packages, golf packages, Laughlin packages, car rentals, sightseeing tours and show tickets," said Larry Peterson, director of leisure sales and marketing for Reservations Plus. "These products are all available on the Web, making it a true one-stop shop for our customers."

In some cases, the informational content preceded the reservation system.

Vegas.com, the website that presents online versions of the Las Vegas Sun and its sister publications, was one of the first Las Vegas sites to provide original content on the resorts.

Bryan Allison, general manager of vegas.com, said the site's predecessor, Vegas Deluxe, developed virtual tours of several resorts. Over the years, that has evolved into data bases for restaurants, shows and other entertainment venues in the city.

Now, vegas.com links users to Priceline.com, a site that allows travelers to post the dollar amount they'd be willing to pay for airline tickets or hotel stays.

When a user selects a flight itinerary or dates for a hotel stay and bids a price, Priceline.com replies within 24 hours with a reply listing an airline or hotel willing to meet the dollar amount.

The down side of Priceline.com: Users only get one opportunity to bid and an airline or hotel may not meet the customer's price. After that, users must adjust the itinerary by one or more days.

"Priceline is something people either love or hate," Allison said. "But I know quite a few people who have gotten good deals with them."

Allison said booking reservations on the Internet is something that will continue to grow as users become more comfortable with how the systems work, become more familiar with how to navigate sites and build confidence that all their transactions won't disappear into cybervapor when they push the button to approve.

Allison has booked about 20 plane trips on the Internet in the past two years and is convinced that speed and convenience will win the travelling public over in the years ahead. Only once in those 20 trips did he have a problem, but it was quickly resolved to his satisfaction at the airport, he said.

"It's so nice to be able to look at all your flight options on your own time and just click on what works best for you," Allison said.

Travelscape.com's partners include some big names in the computer industry. In January, Yahoo!, an Internet search engine, recognized the Las Vegas-based site as one of its five "daily picks" of interesting websites.

"Being singled out by Yahoo! is great recognition for our company," Poster said at the time of the Jan. 15 selection. "Besides being one of the biggest names in the business, Yahoo! has the ability to direct a great deal of traffic to our site."

A month later, Travelscape.com signed a sponsorship agreement with Yahoo! that directs even more traffic to the site.

Last month, the company signed its biggest partnership deal yet, becoming a hotel wholesaler for MSN Expedia, a division of Microsoft Corp., Bill Gates' Redmond, Wash.-based software giant.

The partners look at the relationship as mutually beneficial -- Travelscape.com's browsers link directly to one of the largest travel sites ever developed; Expedia's customers have a link to the reservation company that dominates the market in one of the most desirable destinations in the world.

The Expedia-Travelscape relationship isn't perfect though: Expedia doesn't handle reservations for the largest airline serving McCarran International Airport, Southwest Airlines.

Allison said most savvy travelers recognize the shortcoming and will find their way to Southwest's own website if they want to book a Southwest flight.

"It's a little clunkier than some of the other sites, but it works," he said.

The future of online reservations systems holds speed, reliability, more features and more choice.

Travelscape.com already has introduced its proprietary Click.Less architecture, which reduces booking times to minutes. Company officials say it is one of the easiest reservation systems to operate on the World Wide Web.

Allison said one of his favorite new features is a flight tracker offered by a reservation site called The Trip.com. Browsers who know their airline and flight number can log on and find the location of their plane on a map. Using Federal Aviation Administration data, the site tracks the progress of a flight from city to city.

And, joining Travelscape. com, Reservations Plus and Hotel Reservations and Hotel Reservations Network is Lowestfare.com, a small Internet travel company that is expected to grow following an initial public offering.

Carl Icahn, the new owner of the Stratosphere hotel-casino and a former owner of TWA, is attempting to raise $138 million to bolster Lowestfare.com.

The company already has agreements with 800 travel agents, Virgin Atlantic, Northwest and America West airlines, Hertz Rent-a-Car and Carnival Cruise Lines.

A Securities and Exchange Commission filing said Icahn plans to use the proceeds of the public offering to expand sales and marketing for the company.

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