Enabling users to search for time-relevant flight and hotel options within their planning calendar

Orbitz and BlueTie, Inc. have announced the availability of travel booking integration capabilities within BlueTie’s hosted e-mail, calendaring services and productivity tools for small businesses.

Published: 23 Apr 2007

Orbitz and BlueTie, Inc. have announced the availability of travel booking integration capabilities within BlueTie’s hosted e-mail, calendaring services and productivity tools for small businesses.

For the first time, BlueTie’s new travel planning Featuretisement lets its users search for time-relevant flight and hotel options from within their planning calendar. A demo of this Featuretisement is available at http://travel.bluetie.com.

BlueTie users will have Orbitz’ global access to flights from more than 400 airlines, rooms at more than 65,000 hotel and lodging properties, and 13 rental car companies.

“Today’s launch introduces a new monetisation model for web-based software,” said David Koretz, President and CEO,BlueTie, Inc.

He added, “Instead of hassling users with irrelevant banner and text ads, we are monetising BlueTie’s hosted email and calendar solutions by developing features with best-in-class partners like Orbitz.com that generate revenue while being unobtrusive, and even valuable to the user.”

BlueTie users simply enter select keywords such as “flights” or “hotels” when planning within their calendar to access a familiar step-by-step travel planning interface. Following a user query, Orbitz immediately searches and responds with available inventory. BlueTie then displays within a user’s calendar the flight or lodging options that match a search’s date and time criteria.

According to the company, Featuretisements are designed to be an easy, natural extension of users' normal workflows. There is no banner, text, or other advertising. Moreover, BlueTie's model is cost per action-based. Partners pay only when their services are generating revenue. Additional planned offerings include blogs, dinner reservations and entertainment ticket purchasing.

The alliance with BlueTie, which has a commitment to small business services, follows Orbitz’ February 2007 launch of its own road warrior micro site for unmanaged small or independent business travelers, available through Orbitz.com.

Other Web-based e-mail and software companies rely on banner ads or keyword-based text ads to deliver marketing messages and product offerings to users. In contrast, BlueTie’s Featuretisement partnerships serve both users and advertisers by providing relevant functionality, like travel planning tools, to users while simultaneously providing advertisers with access to new customers, according to an official release.

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