Pegasus Solutions' core business is hotel reservation and distribution technology, including its hotel switch, but the company is getting involved in airline, rail, cruise and vacation rental reservations, too.
Pegasus' foray outside the hotel world was highlighted yesterday by its announcement of a multi-year deal with Orient-Express Hotels, which operates hotels, trains, riverboats, restaurants and safaris.
Orient-Express Hotels agreed to use Pegasus Solutions' RezView NG, a central reservation system; NetBooker NG, a booking engine; and private label voice services for inventory mangement and to offer hotels, rail and cruises in one booking itinerary, the companies said.
Thus, Pegasus isn't building direct-connects to major rail or cruise lines, but is tapping into Orient-Express Hotels' rail and cruise inventory.
Previously, Sabre's SynXis, now called Sabre Hospitality Solutions, had handled hotel reservation management and distribution for Orient-Express Hotels. SynXis only handled hotels for Orient-Express Hotels, but a spokeswoman says it also handles cruise, restaurants and non-hotel activities.
As Pegasus gears up to handle non-hotel inventory for Orient-Express Hotels, Pegasus also involved in developing HP's Agilaire Passenger Service Solution and an implementation of it, known as Jetstream, for American Airlines.
Pegasus licensed RezView NG to HP and it is being used as a database in the Agilaire project.
Meanwhile, Pegasus also is working with the Vacation Rental Managers Assocation to build a vacation rental switch.
Whether it involves a hotel, vacation rental, rail line, airline ticket or cruise sailing, "a reservation is a reservation," says Steve Lapekas, executive vice president of corporate business development at Pegasus, without downplaying the inventory differences. "The question is can you make the reservation and can you put it back when you don't want it."
A vacation rental is a lot trickier to handle than a simple hotel room, but reservations and inventory systems can be configured to handle them, and then it's a question of scale, Lapekas says.
He concedes that Pegasus doesn't need to "reinvent the wheel" to build a vacation rental switch.
"Our core system has the ability to inventory rooms, objects, items, times and even boat slips," Lapekas says. "The technology has enabled us to do that out of one inventory system."