Group Travel Planet, LLC and SideStep have entered into a business development partnership that will allow SideStep customers to book and manage their group hotel rooms of five rooms or more directly online, saving them
valuable time and money.Group Travel Planet and its primary web sites, CoachQuote.com and
GroupTravelPlanet.com, provide group consumers a fully-automated
group-booking engine that enables them to plan, book and manage all
aspects of their group trips online, including their group hotel rooms.
SideStep customers will have access to negotiated group inventory and
discounted group rates at over 14,000 hotels throughout North America that
are part of the Group Travel Planet Network, as-well-as have the ability
to request group rates from thousands of additional hotels.

“SideStep has been the ultimate search engine for individual travelers and
we believe our partnership will allow them to achieve the same status
with group travel planner customers as well,” says Scott Harness,
President and CEO, Group Travel Planet, LLC. “We’re excited that soon
millions of SideStep customers will have the ability to search live group
inventory,  receive instant online confirmations, and have the use of our
online tools for managing their entire booking online - from adding and
dropping rooms to making deposits and payments to submitting their
rooming list and allowing individual group members to reserve rooms
directly from the group leader’s block - all without having to ever make
one phone call.”

The partnership allows SideStep to tap into the small leisure group
market, estimated at between $12 and $15 billion annually in US hotel
revenue. Integration of technologies is currently underway and is expected
to be released to the public in Q1 2005.
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