CHICAGO— Passkey, a developer of ASP solutions for group reservation management, and Newmarket International, a provider of marketing and catering solutions including its Delphi products, have formed a strategic alliance to integrate their hospitality solutions. Launched this week at HITEC, the newly joined technology tools will allow hotels, CVBs, and meeting planners to further automate the group reservation process by eliminating redundant data entry. With the integrated tools, once a meeting is confirmed through Newmarket’s system, Passkey systems will take over the inventory management and fulfillment functions and update Newmarket’s statistics as bookings occurs. At the close of a meeting, Newmarket’s solutions will capture post-departure information and update Passkey’s data accordingly. “The response so far at the show [HITEC] has been, ‘What took so long?’” said Andrew Mace, vp/hospitality sales for Passkey, noting that the software alliance “is a by product of new senior management.” Both Passkey’s President/CEO Greg Pesik and Newmarket’s President/CEO Sean O’Neill joined their respective companies within the past year. Not only do they represent a fresh start for their organizations, but Pesik, O’Neill, and Mace have all previously worked together at a competing software company. “We all know each other. Both the management teams are new and very dedicated… We wanted this to happen,” said Pesik. When asked if the alliance was the beginning of a possible corporate merger, Pesik smiled and said, “There are no plans for a merger right now. But we will continue to do what makes sense for our clients.” While the newly integrated software has yet to be rolled-out in a hotel, the two software developers share a customer base of more than 2,000 properties. The product will not replace existing systems but be consider and “add-on,” he said, and will be marketed jointly by both company’s sales forces. Under the alliance, Newmarket’s CVBreeze solution, which automates services provided by a city’s CVB, will now seamlessly integrate with CityWide, a Passkey group housing solution for CVBs, meeting planners, and hotels that manages events involving one or more hotels. In addition, Newmarket’s Delphi sales, marketing, and catering solutions will also interface with HotelDirect, Passkey’s group housing solution for single-property meetings. Diana M. Rodriguez
