CASMA Seeks Speaking Proposals for 2005 Annual International Conferenc

WASHINGTON, May 4 /PRNewswire/ -- The CASMA (Computerized Airline Sales and Marketing Association) is soliciting speaking proposals to fill a four-day conference agenda on airline distribution, sales and marketing topics. Proposals will be considered based on content relevance. Speaking opportunities are not associated with sponsorships. All proposals must be submitted electronically by 20 May 2005; for complete details contact mpond@arccorp.com.

CASMA conference survey results from March 2005 indicate that members want leading information on a variety of distribution issues including:

1) Is price everything or should costs be relative to the revenue channel?

2) Corporate Travel -- Prospecting 3) GDS New Entrant (GNE) companies and how they really work 4) How do ATPCO, ARINC and ARC support the GNE's?

5) Airline town-hall on lessons they have learned in working with the GNE's.

6) Meta Search Engines and how they are working with the airlines to reduce costs and bring value to the internet channel

7) Revenue Integrity tools

8) Low Cost Carrier Town-Hall on how they are changing the industry by unbundling airline travel (Ryanair, Spirit, Jet Blue, etc.)

9) Merchandising case studies as airlines explore charging for ancillary products or services

10) GDS Information Pages -- where are they going and what is their continued value? Has everyone moved to the internet?

11) Corporate Booking options -- What are the solutions to lower distribution costs for the airlines and corporations?

12) Maximizing schedule management with technology tools -- What do the GDS and other companies offer the airlines to improve the process?

13) Functional overviews of GDS GUI's, therefore, MySabre, Viewpoint, Vista, etc.

14) New opportunities to reduce distribution costs associated with payment options

15) Electronic tickets -- Available hubs, new technology to support interline, etc.

16) Improved interline settlement processes and products to reduce costs

Workshops are 60 minutes in length and should include at least 2 but not more than 4 companies or viewpoints. Proposals are encouraged to include competitors and/or customers in the presentation to provide a more credible and robust discussion of the proposed subject. Workshops are not intended to be commercial opportunities for a single company.

Town-halls are featured discussions scheduled for the opening or closing general sessions. The actual scheduling will be based on the topic, participants and agenda availability. Town-halls are intended to be interactive in nature and will be facilitated by an independent speaker or moderator.

Send proposals to: Mark Pond, Chairman of the CASMA Advisory Council on Conference Content mpond@arccorp.com listing the Topic's Title, a brief 1 paragraph description of the workshop, list of all speakers and titles with preliminary agreement to participate, objective statement outlining what the target audience will achieve through attendance, 10 proposed questions if the proposal is for a town-hall and 3 proposed questions for the audience if the presentation is for a workshop.

Proposals received after 20 May 2005 may be considered; however, there are no guarantees of acceptance. CASMA annual membership dues must be paid before a proposal will be accepted. For information about sponsorships please contact Kim Giese at kim.giese@aa.com.

Computerized Airline Sales & Marketing Association (CASMA), a non-profit industry association, was founded in 1979 by airlines and computerized reservation systems (CRS) to identify and resolve airline distribution challenges from both a technology as well as a best practices perspective. Founding members included Air France, American Airlines , British Airways , Continental Airlines , Delta Airlines , Eastern Airlines, Lufthansa German Airlines, Pan Am, United Airlines (BULLETIN BOARD: UALAQ) , Galileo, Sabre and Worldspan.