• Passkey.com has introduced a new service, HotelDirect, designed for one-hotel meetings and aimed at the corporate market. It is similar to Passkey's citywide product: Planners and hoteliers have 24/7 Web access to housing information. Immediately after contracting an event, a hotel can set up a customized Web page, in about five minutes, for the meeting. No HTML knowledge is required.
The URL will be sent to attendees, who can book their reservations and enter their own data. Eventually, it will allow attendees to make changes in their reservations right up to the arrival date.
In addition to helping corporate planners manage individual meetings, HotelDirect allows them to track multiple meetings taking place at Passkey-enabled properties. Passkey is marketing HotelDirect to hotels through its new agreement with TravelCLICK, a Chicago-based provider of online products for the travel industry.
In the initial phase, TravelCLICK will target eight hotels in three regions; each hotel will use the product to handle two events. HotelDirect is expected to be available at several hundred hotels by the end of the year. The fee structure will be similar to Passkey's citywide product: a $5 to $6 charge per consumed reservation, paid by the hotel. The service is free to meeting planners.