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Pushing registered travel.

Article Excerpt
With its Clear airport security checkpoint lanes operational for roughly 17,000 members in Orlando, Verified Identity Pass is the only company operating a Registered Traveler program in the United States. Business Travel News editors recently met with founder and CEO Steven Brill at VIP's offices in New York to discuss the state of Registered Traveler, corporate contracting and working with travel suppliers on joint programs.

BTN: You just announced Toronto's airport signed an agreement. Will that be interoperable with U.S. programs?

Steven Brill: To keep things simple at the beginning, this is a program for Canadians leaving the Toronto airport, just the way the Orlando program is for Americans leaving the Orlando airport--wherever they may be going. The logic would be that once the programs are running, each government will recognize what the other is doing. Therefore we could easily make it interoperable with an American program and vice versa.

BTN: What's the government approval process like there?

Brill: We know that the Canadian Air Transport Security Authority encouraged us to talk to airports, and encouraged airports to talk to us. We fell pretty good about it.

BTN: TSA plans to roll out the program nationwide on June 20. Is there a similar timeframe in Canada?

Brill: There isn't because the discussion is just starting.

BTN: Is there any sort of set pricing model for corporate travel buyers or other bulk purchasers?

Brill: It's not set because we haven't figured it out yet. There are some entities--Hyatt is the one that is well-known publicly--that have bought tens of thousands (BTN, March 6). Their model could be 10 or 12 percent different than everyone else's. It's not a lot. The consensus is we're leaving a significant amount of money on the table. We actually lose money on everybody in...

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