Today's Wall Street Journal reports that Hilton has joined with Hyatt, Marriott, Six Continents and Starwood to form something called Hotel Distribution System. This company will "sell discounted rooms over the Internet." This was in the print edition.

Has anyone heard anything else about this? I tried several of the other forums, but couldn't find anything via the search function.

I haven't heard anything about this but competition is always good pricewise for the consumer.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by onedog:
I haven't heard anything about this but competition is always good pricewise for the consumer.</font>

I agree. I was also wondering if the Hilton rooms that are now sold on Priceline will soon be made available through this new company instead. Guess we'll just have to wait and see.

I found this:

February 13, 2002 | Utell, a subsidiary of Pegasus Solutions, Inc., announced it will be one of the first hotel suppliers to be distributed through newly formed Hotel Distribution System (HDS), LLC.

Announced this week, HDS is a venture of Pegasus Solutions and five hotel chains - Hilton Hotels, Hyatt Corporation, Marriott International, Six Continents Hotels and Starwood Hotels - that will market hotel rooms over the Internet through multiple online sites using a "merchant" business model. The HDS venture is owned equally by the six companies. Utell is the hotel industry's largest third-party marketing and reservations provider.

"Through the HDS venture, Utell hotel members will be able to electronically supply discounted rates to HDS and its affiliates, such as Orbitz, through Utell's Web-based NetRez system," said Mark Wells, president and chief operating officer of Utell. "No longer will our member properties need to provide their discounted room inventory manually. Through NetRez, properties will dynamically open or close access to their discounted room inventory based on their last-minute occupancy needs."

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/content/archives/netnew/00000614.htm

Thanks, USAFAN. I'm not certain what a merchant business model is (any MBA's out there?), but I'm all for anything that facilitates access to discounted hotel rates --- especially if they may qualify for HH credit. Love those points and miles!

The above link seems to be no longer valid but here's another one.

http://www.pegs.com/newsroom/press/021202.htm

Just looking at it, the purpose of the service seems similar to Orbitz?

Kind of, it seems like it will aggregate the the weekend specials some of these chains are offering anyway.

I'm not sure what "merchant" business model means either ...

I'm not sure this will be competition for Priceline either because it does not look like it will be a "blind" system.

Personally I'm surprised that Priceline has gone this long without substantial competition.

The beauty of priceline is that the travel providers compete against each other to offer the lowest price. I can't imagine that a hotel venture geared to compete with Priceline would pass muster under U.S. competition laws. They will have a problem under antitrust laws if they communicate pricing information to each other. They will probably have to limit their operations to something like Orbitz.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by TrojanHorse:
Personally I'm surprised that Priceline has gone this long without substantial competition. </font>

I'm not sure what your definition of "substantial competition" is, but I would consider Hotwire.com and Expedia.com (though they've moved out of the market, but they offered a similar service for a while) to be substantial competition.

Priceline got such a headstart it's going to be very difficult for any competitor to catch up.

<font face="Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif" size="2">Originally posted by LemonThrower:
The beauty of priceline is that the travel providers compete against each other to offer the lowest price. I can't imagine that a hotel venture geared to compete with Priceline would pass muster under U.S. competition laws. They will have a problem under antitrust laws if they communicate pricing information to each other. They will probably have to limit their operations to something like Orbitz.</font>

The other problem is that this looks like it will display the hotel before you commit to purchasing (though there are no real details, that's just somewhat of a guess). If that is the case, Priceline prices will still be significantly lower I think because hotels will not be willing to publish prices as deeply discounted as they can offer anonymously through Priceline.

Okay, here is the big question everyones wants the answer to.

When booking on this site, will we get HHonors points and miles? It would seem unlikely to me, but we can hold out hope!