Pegasus: Unirez a new benefit to travel agents

Pegasus Solutions’ acquisition of Unirez not only enhances its services to small hotel chains and independents, but it’s also a positive move for US-based and other travel agents, according to company officials. “They (travel agents) will now be able to offer an improved level of product and inventory in more cities than in the past,” Robert J. Boles, Pegasus’ executive vice president of sales and marketing, said during a conference call. With the acquisition of Unirez, Pegasus now represents nearly 7,000 independent and small and mid-size chain hotel properties around the world. Nearly 3,000 of those properties are in the Americas. In addition to being able to offer more products, agents can also take advantage of other enhanced offerings such as commission processing services. Mr Boles said the acquisition of Unirez, one of the fastest growing hotel reservations in the world, would help drive bookings for Pegasus-represented hotels by both traditional and online travel agencies. “Traditional GDS bookings continue to be our highest percentage, but they’re flat, whereas internet-based bookings are growing. Growth (internet) has declined over the past 45 days to two months,” he said. When it comes to total bookings, however, he said traditional GDS continues to represent the bulk of room nights. When asked why internet bookings had slowed from their rate of 30% a month or so, Mr Boles said there were many different theories. One possibility was more hoteliers are booking on their own Web sites. Pegasus purchased Unirez for $38 million in cash. The transaction is expected to generate about $10 million in future tax savings to reduce that price, however. The acquisition allowed Pegasus to grow its US hotel customer base and enhance technology offerings. Pegasus now serves more than 50,000 hotel properties, as well as a majority of the world’s travel agencies. “The addition of Unirez rounds out our multi-tiered representation strategy for independent and small group hotels by providing a lower-cost distribution system service,” said John F. Davis III, president and CEO of Pegasus. When integration is complete in 2004, hotel members of various Pegasus services will be able to utilize Unirez’s automated process that immediately uploads hotel data into various distribution channels. That date can also e modified at any time. Pegasus is the hotel industry’s largest third-party marketing and reservations provider.