Hotel groups' joint Web site ready for New Year launch

Accor, Forte and Hilton International are close to launching their joint £12m Web site for hotel bookings, which is to be called andbook.com.

Visitors to the site, which is due to launch by January 2001, will be able to make reservations for any of Accor's 3,500 hotels, Forte's 450 properties or the 220 hotels run by Hilton. The companies expect the site to account for 15% of their business within three years.

While it will focus initially on bedroom reservations, the partners intend to expand the service to conference and meeting facilities and travel services such as car hire.

Once the new company has won clearance from European competition authorities, which is expected by late November, it will be incorporated in the UK with offices in London and Paris. Chief executive officer is to be Michael Madison, former worldwide director of e-commerce at Forte.

The three founders hope to be able to name some new partners in the venture within weeks. "We are talking with all the major players in Europe, country by country," said Serge Ragozin, executive vice-president for hotels and resorts at Accor.

The trio are also planning a business-to-business Web site for hotel groups to buy goods and services on-line (Caterer, 10 August, page 11). Ragozin hoped the first phase could be launched by mid-2001, initially for the European market. The partners are already investigating the Asia Pacific area.

Bass, which last month joined a similar on-line marketplace devised by Marriott International and Hyatt Hotels for the North American market, said it was still interested in the European venture and had not ruled out joining the combined reservations service either.

A spokesman for Whitbread said there was "tremendous enthusiasm" in the company for the purchasing project and that joining it was "still very much a possibility". But Whitbread believed it was already well served by other on-line reservations services.

by Angela Frewin