By: Deborah Johnson Wood
Priceline.com has finalized its plans to open a call center in Wyoming, announcing yesterday a long-term lease agreement on a 45,670-square-foot property at 4147 Eastern Ave. SE. The existing building will eventually house local high-tech jobs for customers booking travel reservations through Booking.com, Priceline.com’s international business unit.
Prior to the announcement, spokesperson Brian Ek told Rapid Growth that Priceline “may” have contacted area colleges and universities to recruit students for some of the bi-lingual positions.
An official-looking post on Aquinas College’s The Moose community web site indicates 350 positions are open for bi- and multi-lingual students, and interviews are taking place as of August 1 with possible start dates in mid-August.
The posting lists Dona Mouw as a contact. Tim Mroz, senior communications director of The Right Place, Inc., confirmed that Priceline.com hired Dona Mouw, a former staffing manager at Herman Miller, as human resources director. The Right Place, Inc., is a Grand Rapids-based economic development corporation assisting in the Priceline.com negotiations.
“We’re not going to speculate on the total number of jobs,” Ek said, “but the office building we’re discussing occupying is over 45,000 square feet, so that’s a fair amount of office space.
“The types of employees we’ll need are customer support, credit control operations, a group of writers, translators and editors responsible for generating content for web sites available in multiple languages around the world," Ek added. So that’s a very broad brush stroke of our operations.”
The Right Place, in collaboration with the city of Wyoming, The Michigan Economic Growth Authority, and the Michigan Economic Development Corporation have worked with priceline.com since April.
Birgit Klohs, president and CEO of The Right Place Inc. said in a prepared statement, “Our efforts in attracting and retaining talent in West Michigan are rewarded by projects like these. Partnering with the State of Michigan and the City of Wyoming as a unified team was critical to the success of this project. Everyone involved played a critical role in making this a success.”
Source: Brian Ek, Priceline.com. The Right Place, Inc.
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Priceline.com eyes Wyoming for international call center, perhaps 600 jobs
Deborah Johnson Wood is the development news editor for Rapid Growth Media. She can be contacted at [email protected].
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