KDS, the European provider of online business travel management and Europcar…
KDS, the European provider of online business travel management and Europcar, have announced the signing of an overall partnership agreement.
This agreement allows KDS to provide its customers with a direct access from its solutions to the Europcar “Greenway” central reservation system for online vehicle reservations.
For Europcar, this partnership is part of its policy for the strategic development of its online distribution channels, explains Rafael Girona, COO of Europcar: “With 100,000 reservations per month, our reservations over the Internet are now experiencing rapid growth, which explains our desire to provide our customers with solutions for making direct reservations by Internet. This is why we have signed this overall partnership with KDS, a proven actor on the European market. This agreement is part of our policy for the constant improvement of our service quality for our corporate customers”.
With the KDS Corporate solution, companies can define and carefully manage their travel policy, and easily access the public or negotiated rates of the various actors in the travel industry. KDS Corporate makes it possible for a company’s employees to order their cars online, as well as their plane tickets, train tickets and hotels.
“This partnership is perfectly in line with our policy to develop direct links, which is one of the major facets in the strategy of KDS, an independent actor. Indeed, we wish to multiply the number of accesses to the various distribution channels, thus providing our customers with the greatest freedom of choice when reserving their travel. By offering this new direct access to the Europcar central reservation system, we are responding to their request and to the market’s expectations.” states Jean-Francois Vergnangeal, Senior VP Marketing & Strategic Alliances at KDS.
The solution proposed by KDS and Europcar provides companies with many advantages:
- a more economical solution via access to the best rates, linked to the lower distribution costs provided by the Internet.
- a more flexible solution in terms of the services and functions available to the users.
This technological partnership also includes marketing and commercial aspects, as each party undertakes to promote it among its corporate customers.
The direct link between KDS and Europcar will be made available to customers at the start of 2005.
Theodore is the Co-Founder and Managing Editor of TravelDailyNews Media Network; his responsibilities include business development and planning for TravelDailyNews long-term opportunities.
