Southwest Airlines booking rooms on website

Wednesday, March 7, 2001 | 11:25 a.m.

The airline that offers the most flights to Las Vegas is getting into the hotel reservation business through its Internet site, a move that could impact big online reservation companies like Expedia and Travelocity.

Southwest Airlines, which will offer 171 daily operations at McCarran International Airport when it completes its next round of expansion in June, announced today that southwest.com, the airline's Internet site, has begun offering hotel reservations.

Company officials said southwest.com began offering rental car reservations in December and that proved to be a big success. Offering hotel room reservations was next on the company's agenda, a strategy that was in the planning stages for more than a year.

The new service is under southwest.com's reservations page. Online customers can reserve a hotel room by selecting the city, dates, number of guests, desired amenities and distance from the airport they wish to stay. Customers also can define the list to book rooms with partners of Southwest's frequent-flier program, Rapid Rewards, which can give discounts or rewards toward other company promotions.

In Las Vegas, Southwest is a big factor in filling the city's 124,270 hotel rooms.

Southwest has a vast network of hotel partners for its vacation packages and an online business network known as SWABIZ. Southwest customers who want to stay in Las Vegas can choose from a wide variety of resort properties, including the MGM Grand, the Venetian, the Mirage, several Mandalay Resort Group properties, Harrah's, the Four Seasons and the Stratosphere.

The airline also partners with a number of discount chains, like Econolodge, Rodeway Inn, Best Western, Travelodge, Candlewood Suites, Doubletree and Extended Stay America. The airline's Rapid Rewards partners are Hilton, Hyatt and Marriott properties and those properties are available for reservations.

Christine Turneabe-Connelly, a spokeswoman for Southwest, said the company already is tweaking the site, which currently lists the corporate name of the hotel property before the name of the resort on the Internet site.

"We want people to be able to spot Strip properties that they know about immediately when they come to the site," she said.

Industry experts say the new Southwest venture could give existing reservation companies some high-powered competition. Southwest's Internet division is one of the company's fastest growing ventures and last year, the company touted its Internet flight bookings as one of its keys to growth.

Among the companies that could feel the southwest.com's entry in the market are Travelocity, affiliated with Sabre, Hotel Reservations Network, Dallas, which operates hoteldiscounts.com, Las Vegas-based Travelscape.com, which is affiliated with Expedia.com, a Microsoft Corp. spinoff, and Las Vegas-based lowestfare.com, which packages most of its hotel bookings with TWA flights.

Bryan Allison, director of content for vegas.com, which partners with Hotel Reservations Network to offer room reservations, said southwest.com could have an impact on the industry if it offers hotel room reservations independently of its flights -- which it does. The Las Vegas Sun and its website lasvegassun.com are sister companies of vegas.com.

The largest Internet sites consider the new venture as competition. Southwest Airlines flights no longer are listed on Expedia's and Travelocity's sites.