- GetThere
Infobox_Company
company_name = GetThere, Inc.
company_
company_type = Acquired
foundation =1995
location =Southlake, Texas
key_people =Dan Whaley , Founder & CTOBruce Yoxsimer , Founder
num_employees = 600 (2000)
industry = Online Travel
homepage = [http://www.getthere.com]
footnotes =GetThere is the largest online booking solution for corporate travel. The Web-based software solution is used by more than 3,000 companies worldwide for employees to book business travel within company policies, with company-preferred suppliers, and at company discounted rates, all from an easy-to-use corporate intranet Web site.
GetThere was founded by Dan Whaley and Bruce Yoxsimer in Palo Alto, CA in 1994 under the name Internet Travel Network and was the first site on the Web to allow a user to book their own travel reservations.
In June 1995, the first travel reservation ever made over the web was booked through a web server located in Whaley's living room (it was a San Francisco – Las Vegas round trip). Today, travel is the dominant worldwide e-commerce category by nearly every measure — 40 cents of every consumer dollar spent online is spent on travel.
Initially, the company provided online travel to corporations and to consumers via ITN.net as well as powering travel bookings on other Web sites. However, by 1997, the company began to focus exclusively on a B2B strategy, providing transaction services to anyone needing to enable travel reservation services online. By 1999, GetThere was focused almost exclusively on the corporate and airline markets and sold the ITN.net consumer site to American Express.
Outmaneuvering both Microsoft and Sabre in the highly competitive business travel segment, by 2000 GetThere was the dominant provider of Internet-based travel reservation functionality to the airline, corporate and leisure travel industries — booking more web-based travel reservations than any other competitor. GetThere focused on the top 100 traveling companies — signing nearly 70 of those 100 companies as customers. A key selling point was GetThere's ability to work with any Global Distribution System (GDS) and any supporting travel agency — minimizing obstacles to dealing with any potential corporate client and their associated travel vendor relationships.
After raising $80M in a 1999 IPO, the company was sold to The Sabre Group (NYSE: TSG) in 2000 for $750 million — nearly 1/3 of Sabre’s market cap.
Under Sabre, GetThere was combined with the Sabre BTS group, a previous competitor in the corporate online booking. By Oct 2003, GetThere was fully integrated into Sabre Holdings, becoming part of the Sabre Travel Network, Sabre Airline Solutions and
Travelocity divisions.Today, GetThere survives under the same name as the premiere travel reservation solution for the large corporate market. Sabre continues to improve the core product via improvements from shared technology initiatives with Travelocity, one of the largest consumer travel sites.
External links
* [http://www.getthere.com GetThere]
* [http://www.kds.com KDS]
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