Worktopia Inc. recently announced that it had reached an agreement with Sabre Travel Network to be the first GDS-based direct booking engine to enable live booking of meeting space in hotels and conference centers. 
The service, which goes live next month, will empower more than 6,000 North American Sabre-connected agencies with a new opportunity to serve the corporate meeting market.
With the debut of Worktopia on MySabre, Sabre-connected agents gain the capability to easily search, compare and book meeting facilities within hotels and conference centers and then complete the meeting arrangements with air, hotel rooms, car and travel extras completely online, without the need for Requests for Proposals, phone tag or delay.
The Worktopia booking engine allows Sabre agents and meeting planners to enter specific meeting requirements—from location, room types and sizes and configurations to audiovisual and catering needs.
The engine then checks availability, displays matching solutions, provides "apples to apples" pricing proposals, and then allows for online booking of the meeting space. Worktopia's engine, the first and only live booking service for meeting facilities, directly accesses meeting room reservation systems data of more than 2,000 hotels and meeting centers.
Participating properties can choose between an annual marketing subscription and a pay-for-performance commission agreement. Either way, agents earn booking fees from Worktopia on meeting room bookings and continue to earn commissions on the room nights from the hotels.
Also, Worktopia recently announced that Travelocity Partner Network, which is part of Travelocity, is providing a hotel room option to Worktopia's instant meeting space booking services.
By integrating with Travelocity's extensive database of travel information and reservation services, Worktopia users can now also book hotel rooms either in the same venue as the meeting space or in other hotels nearby.
Worktopia offers planners real-time access to over 5,000 meeting rooms in 1,000 locations through its proprietary automated portal.
There is no special training or certification requirement to use Worktopia, and the service is free to end-users and site visitors.
Visit www.worktopia.com .