CoachQuote.com® Signs Deal With Pegasus on New PegsTour Program

Company First to Connect to Real-Time Group Hotel Inventory

Pigeon Forge, TN (PRWEB) June 24, 2004 -- CoachQuote.com®, the travel industrys first and leading online group-booking engine, is pleased to announce that it has signed an agreement with Pegasus Solutions, Inc. to interface with Pegasus new PegsTour service. Pegasus, a leading global provider of hotel reservations-related services and technology, developed PegsTour to automate hotel bookings for both hotel companies and professional tour and wholesale operators.

The service will allow CoachQuote.com® users to now pull allocated group inventory and rates directly from the central reservation environment of individual hotels participating in the PegsTour service. Since its start in March 2000, thousands of professional tour operators and group leaders have relied solely on group inventory and rates from CoachQuote.coms extranet system of close to 10,000 hotels -- the largest such inventory of its kind.

Its all about convenience," says Scott Harness, president and CEO, CoachQuote.com®. We want it to be convenient for our hotel members to allocate and manage their group inventory and rates -- be it from their own central reservation system or through their online CoachQuote.com® account - while at the same time making it much more convenient for our group travel planner members to find and book their groups hotel rooms by having even more hotels to choose from."

Hotel chains are very interested in PegsTour because they know many of their individual hotels are bogged down with manual bookings," says Heath Kane, director of tour services, Pegasus Solutions, Inc. He explains that hotels now have to handle all group bookings manually as opposed to having those bookings automated through their central reservation system as are individual bookings. CoachQuote.com® will offer tour operators and other group travel planners the ability to book their group rooms directly to the hotels reservation environment, saving hotels considerable time and money while providing the hotels customers with quicker and more convenient service.

Four years ago when we started CoachQuote.com®, we dreamt about the day the industry would reach this point -- the point that would allow for a company like ours to seamlessly connect to thousands of hotels while at the same time providing them a way to manage their group inventory, rates, and resulting group bookings all through their CRS," says Harness. That day is here and it is truly an honor to not only have been the company thats been leading the way in online group bookings, but that we have an opportunity to continue to change and shape the industry by being the first travel web site to sign such a deal with Pegasus."

About CoachQuote.com®

CoachQuote.com®, which recently became a subsidiary of Group Travel Planet, has been leading the way in online group travel planning by successfully enabling thousands of professional tour operators and group leaders to plan and book all aspects of their group trips online, including chartering a motor coach, booking group hotel rooms, securing group attraction tickets, and more. With the recent launch of its much-anticipated 2nd generation web technology, the company has taken online group travel planning to the next level by enabling these same group travel planners to now also manage their group bookings online -- from adding and dropping rooms to making deposits and payments - all the way up until the time their group takes their trip.

The company has successfully grown its supplier membership base to over 11,000 supplier members, 9,200-plus of which are hotels located throughout North America. In addition, the company has maintained an exclusive partnership with the American Bus Association for online bus chartering. At the end of 2003, the company realized gross sales of over $38 million with $19.1 coming from bus chartering and $12.2 coming from online hotel bookings.

For Additional Information contact:
Jennifer Blackwell
CoachQuote.com®
PO Box 1201
Pigeon Forge, TN 37868
Phone: (865) 428-8878
http://www.CoachQuote.com
jennifer@coachquote.com