American Express signed
a deal with B2B e-commerce corporate meetings and events company StarCite Inc. that will let the financial
services giant offer customized Web-based meeting sourcing and management
tools to its customers.
StarCite’s services will be provided through American Express One, a business
unit of American Express Corporate Services that markets travel and related
services to small- and mid-sized companies.
Financial arrangements were not
disclosed.
Under the agreement StarCite and American Express One will create a
co-branded version of StarCite.com and offer customized sites for individual
corporate customers.
Using the co-branded site, American Express customers will be able to
initiate and manage much of the meeting planning process online, in
conjunction with American Express One’s Meetings & Incentives group’s
traditional meeting planning services.
The Web-based tools will allow
customers to find destinations, choose properties, issue electronic RFPs and
participate in online reverse auctions for meeting space and other related
services.
The agreement with StarCite complements American Express One’s existing
suite of corporate group travel and incentive services, which cover corporate
business meetings, incentive programs and special event planning.
Those
services include consolidation of meeting expenditures, registration
services, site searches and destination analysis.
“By using the Internet to manage many stages of a corporate meeting, for
everything from searching for and seeking bids from hotels to registration
services, companies can cut the cost of meetings and improve the
administrative processes they employ to manage events,” said Jay Roseman,
vice president of American Express One Meetings & Incentives.
American Express Corporate Services counts more than 70 percent of the
Fortune 500, along with tens of thousands of mid-sized companies, as
customers of its Business Travel, Corporate Card, Corporate Purchasing Card
and Consulting Services group.
