Service smooths out employee travel perks

ID90 Travel

Founded: 2006 by Tristan Schukraft

CEO: Mike Stacy

Board: Comprises former travel company executives

- FWBP Digital Partners -

What it does: Streamline employee travel processes

Investors: Baroda Ventures in Beverly Hills, Venture Capital and Thayer Ventures in San Francisco, Sun Mountain Capital in Santa Fe, and Gerbera Capital in Mexico City

ID90 Travel Eligibility: Active and retired airline, FedEX and UPS employees

ID90 Travel Fees and Membership: Free

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What it offers: Hotels, all-inclusive resorts, vacation and car rentals, flights, cruises, activities and trip insurance

www.id90travel.com

  

One benefit of working for an airline is access to space-available, free or discounted tickets. But since these tickets are generally available only at the last minute, planning a trip that is more complex than just from here to there can be complicated.

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But there’s a solution. Since its inception in 2006, ID90 Travel has focused on making travel quick, easy and affordable for current and retired airline, FedEx and UPS employees.

ID90 is a free, web-based self-service travel benefit platform that can be accessed online or with its mobile apps at any time. ID90 was founded by Tristan Schukraft when he learned, while flying for work, of the difficulties that airline employees have in using their travel benefits.

He sold Vespa scooters out of the trunk of his car to raise company capital and began automating airlines’ non-revenue flight processes. He’s no longer associated with the company.

But ID90 is more than a booking agency for benefit travel. It now also offers the benefits available through travel agents – discounts on cruises, hotels and car rentals worldwide at more than 350,000 hotels in 38,000 destinations across six continents.

“ID90 Travel is the first company in the airline industry to provide employee pass-travel programs with the ability to seamlessly book discounted hotels, rental cars and cruises,” ID90 CEO Mike Stacy said.

Stacy has a long, varied and successful background in the travel business. He was hired by Travelocity in 1997, during its early days, and was part of the management team that took the company public before it was reprivatized after Sabre bought it.

As president of Cheaptickets.com, he led that business to being 2004’s fastest growing online travel site. He then was CEO of Groople.com, raising $13 million in venture financing and ultimately leading to the sale of the site to a travel management company.

“I know a lot about travel and e-commerce, and ID90’s investors reached out to me,” Stacy said. “I knew a lot about this whole airline employee travel market because my wife used to work for American Airlines.”

He used to kid her about how hard it was to use her travel benefits, “and lo and behold I get a call from these guys and get to finally execute all these things I was telling my wife about as far as improving the system,” he said.

When Stacy became CEO of ID90 in 2011, he brought a focus on new technologies and mobile devices. Currently, 74 percent of ID90’s transactions happen on a mobile device. The company is launching a new app in July that Stacy says will be, among other things, 10 to 15 times faster than the current app, and more user friendly when booking and reserving an airline ticket.

When he started, he was the only employee in the Grapevine ID90 office, with the other 50 employees in Argentina. Now, the Grapevine office, with 50 employees, is getting ready to move to Southlake.

“My management philosophy is our employees come first, then our customers and then our investors,” Stacy said. “If we take care of our employee they will do a good job, then we take care of the customer, and if we take care of the customer we take care of the investors, too.”

ID90 functions as a two-part business. “The first part is that airlines outsource their non-revenue air travel and the processing of those transactions to us. Then, what we did is we said let’s be an online travel agency just for employees and offer them deep discounts,” Stacy said.

All retired and current airline employees as well as their families can use the ID90 booking system. If an employee’s airline is not a ticketing client, the employee can still use ID90 by signing up as a member online with his or her airline employee ID and book any service except flights. Additionally, all retired and current FedEx and UPS employees have access to book all services through ID90 except flights.

Stacy said ID90 is able to get deep discounts on cruises and hotels because of the hectic and last-minute schedule of an airline employee.

“Forty percent of hotel transactions are paid day of travel and, because of this, hotels are more willing to provide a deep discount, and cruises as well,” he said, adding that the companies would rather fill that last room or cabin at a discount than not at all.

Megan Tetrault, a ticketing and gate agent with SkyWest Airlines, has been using ID90 for more than a year and says she tries to take a trip every week or so. She says she is always checking ID90’s rates against other travel companies.

“I always shop around to compare prices – we all work hard for our money, right? – and ID90’s prices almost indefinitely match or beat the other discount travel websites like Expedia, Hotwire, et cetera, so I always start my research with them,” Tetrault said.

Her favorite trip booked through ID90 was a four-day vacation to the East Coast with one of her best friends who wanted to move to the area. They began the trip by flying into Portland, Maine, on a Sunday night.

“On Monday, we explored Boston by taking the Samuel Adams brew tour, having a beer at the original Cheers bar that inspired the TV show, and immersing ourselves in the history of the city by visiting the site of the Boston Tea Party and the Boston Massacre,” Tetrault said.

The booking system allowed them to squeeze in an extra day to be spent in New York City.

“My life motto is a quote that I have no idea who to credit, but it simply states, ‘Travel is the only thing you buy that makes you richer,’ ” she said. “Life is a beautiful gift that is enriched, at least for me personally, when I take the opportunities to travel.”

Another satisfied ID90 Travel user is customer and brand ambassador Shannon Hutchinson, a pilot with Caribbean Airlines. “I wish I had known about ID90 Travel sooner. I’ve been an airline pilot since 2007 and an avid non-revenue traveler,” she said. “I can’t begin to wrap my head around how much money and time I could have saved booking through their website.”

Her favorite trip was to Ladera Resort in St. Lucia.

“Crew and co-workers that saw my photos asked where I stayed and how I booked such an amazing hotel. To say I’ve signed up ‘a few’ colleagues would be a huge understatement. I’ve been an ID90 Travel cheerleader long before I became a brand ambassador,” she said.