GetThere Survey Identifies Top Ten Most Affordable ``Meeting'' Cities

MENLO PARK, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Oct. 29, 2002--


Survey Illustrates How Online Technology Can Cut Costs for Corporations During Meeting Planning Process

GetThere, a Sabre Company, the world's leading provider of online corporate travel reservation systems, today issued survey results that identify the top ten cities ideal for corporate meetings, based on cost.
According to results generated by GetThere's online meeting planning tool, Jacksonville, Florida ranks as the most economic location for corporate meetings, with Indianapolis and Atlanta following in second and third place respectively.
With increasing pressure to cut costs, companies are complementing their online travel reservation programs with online meeting technology to plan smarter, cost-effective corporate meetings, said Mike Malinchok, manager of DirectMeetings at GetThere. This survey illustrates how GetThere DirectMeetings can help corporations better understand the costs of a meeting and take advantage of less expensive meeting locations that they may not have considered.
To identify the top ten cities, GetThere planned a mock three-day meeting made up of one hundred attendees, with two attendees coming from each of the top fifty most populated cities as ranked by the U.S. Census Bureau. GetThere DirectMeetings evaluated four-star hotel properties that included business services as part of their amenities, leveraging information from its database of 10,000 hotel properties. The online system took into account hotel room rates, estimated food and beverage expenses and meeting room rental rates, as well as more than 250,000 potential air fares. Results were tabulated and ranked based on overall meeting cost.(1)
The top ten cities tabulated by GetThere DirectMeetings (ranked highest to lowest) are:



1. Jacksonville, FL

2. Indianapolis, IN

3. Atlanta, GA

4. Tucson, AZ

5. Dallas, TX

6. Salt Lake City, UT

7. Chicago, IL

8. New Orleans, LA

9. Tampa, FL

10. Philadelphia, PA


About GetThere DirectMeetings

GetThere DirectMeetings is the only online meeting planning and procurement system that provides comprehensive meeting site selection, automated attendee management and group travel booking within one integrated system on a corporation's intranet. It is the only integrated system with real time access to hotel information, enabling planners to reduce the complexity and time required to locate and secure a meeting facility from weeks to minutes. With GetThere DirectMeetings, corporate travel managers can reduce meeting costs as much as 50 percent, while reducing the amount of time spent planning a meeting by as much as 75 percent.

About GetThere

GetThere, a Sabre Company, is the leading provider of Web-based travel reservation systems for corporations and airlines. GetThere's systems are used to provide Web-based travel procurement including air, hotel, car and meeting planning to employees at leading corporations such as American Management Systems, Boeing, Charles Schwab, ChevronTexaco, Cisco, Honeywell, PricewaterhouseCoopers and SBC Communications. GetThere also powers Web-based travel booking for leading airlines, including Air New Zealand, Alitalia, All Nippon Airways, Aloha Airlines, British Airways, Cathay Pacific Airways, National Airlines and United Airlines.

Logos, product and company names mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

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