Cornell Panelists Take Technology, E-Commerce To Next Level

FORT LAUDERDALE E-commerce and technology were key topics at this year s Cornell University Hospitality Conference, as panelists and keynote speakers discussed the changes the medium will have on the industry s future. Michael Egan, chairman of theglobe.com, ANC Rental Corp. and Certified Vacations, was the most emphatic on the topic. Internet use and technology use are un-ignoreable, he told the audience. If you looked at the age of the Internet in terms of human life it would be in the first 30 seconds of a baby s life. A lot more is going to happen, he predicted. Egan pointed out that Wall Street will soon recognize a new Internet-generated business category, which he dubbed dot-Bricks-and-Mortar, or dotBAM. DotBAM companies are those bricks and mortar companies that make the best use of technology in their businesses and will soon be seen as valuable entities in the financial markets, he explained. Money is going into bricks and clicks, he said. The hotel industry must strive to join this dotBAM category, he warned. Your business also must be viewed [by Wall Street]as a technologically intensive business. Most of you don t have a comprehensive, well-managed group handling that issue. Most of you are doing a little of this and a little of that. Those who do go in this direction will do well. The dotBAM market will respond famously, he said. Experts were also on hand to discuss changes in e-distribution. A panel comprised of Scott Anderson, executive vp, Internet for Cendant s Travel Division; Dave Miranda, CEO of lastminutetravel.com; Cindy Estis Green, senior vp, Pegasus Systems; Gary Goldberg, product manager, hotels, Priceline.com, and Dominic Rinaldi, senior vp/sales and operations, WorldRes.com commented on the effect the Internet is having on the travel business and on consumer behavior. Rumors of the death of the intermediary in the hotel business have been greatly exaggerated, some panelists indicated. Estis Green from Pegasus noted the Internet has not necessarily cut traditional booking intermediaries out of the system since it is unlikely that all consumers will be booking directly on hotel company websites in the future. Cendant s Anderson noted that hotel companies, by abdicating so much business to third-party Internet vendors, have actually created an entirely new type of intermediary in the form of on-line travel agents. Half the business on-line is going to travel agents, he said. We have morphed a whole new business. Goldberg of Priceline.com noted that with so many on-line booking engines these days, consumers are suffering from information overload. As a result, they are choosing booking engines that give them the best experience and the best value, he said. Many intermediaries won t be around because they are not providing the best value, said Goldberg. A major change has taken place in the way consumers now relate to the hotel industry, thanks to the Internet, according to Miranda of lastminutetravel.com. What I have seen in talking to suppliers is that the Internet doesn t respect any said. of the traditional rules, he said. This is the first time the pendulum has swung from the power of the supplier to the power of the consumer. Meanwhile, said Miranda, the Internet is driving down the cost of distribution to zero. We haven t seen the power of what is about to happen. Two percent of rooms are booked on line. That means that 98% aren t. That is a massive opportunity, he noted. Another hot panel discussion focused on on-line purchasing, or Revolutionizing Supply Chain Management Through Operational Integration of the Internet. Ravi Kalakota, chairman/CEO of hsupply.com and author of EBusiness: Roadmap For Success; Rajesh Shah, vp, Noble Investment Group, and John Noller, vp/purchasing, Sunstone Hotel Investors compared notes on their experiences in taking the purchasing arena on-line. Kalakota, whose hsupply.com is one of the newest Internet purchasing products in the market