Priceline Europe is launching a new online marketing program designed to encourage international tourists to visit select U.S., Canadian, Caribbean and Mexican destinations and patronize hotels that have partnered with Priceline Europe. U.S. cities being promoted through the program include San Francisco, New York, Las Vegas, Orlando, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, Chicago, Boston and Miami.

Through this promotion, Priceline Europe provides a powerful way for hotels to reach a broad cross section of international tourists who book hotels through Priceline Europe and its global affiliates. Priceline Europe markets its agency-model hotel reservation services in more than 40 countries and is available in a dozen languages including English, French, German, Italian, Japanese, Mandarin, Dutch and Spanish. The new online initiative will include promoting participating hotels through priceline’s own Web sites such as www.bookings.net, www.activehotels.com and www.priceline.co.uk and its affiliates around the world. Participating hotels can provide their own property descriptions, which are translated for free into different languages.

There is no charge for a hotel to participate in this marketing program. However, participation will be limited to a select number of hotels. Participating hotels will connect to Priceline Europe through an extranet or through hotel-developed XML connections.

Priceline Europe is one of the largest and fastest growing European online hotel reservation services, working with over 20,000 hotels. In the 1st quarter 2006, Priceline Europe’s hotel reservation service had US$272.8 million in gross bookings, an organic growth rate of more than 100% over the same period last year.

“As one of the largest online hotel reservation services, we serve a significant percentage of the international traveling population that books their holidays through the Internet,” said Stef Norden, President and Chief Executive Officer of Priceline Europe. “This is a large, attractive and incremental base of future visitors for U.S., Canadian, Caribbean and Mexican hotels. Priceline Europe is pleased to help our hotel partners reach out to this largely untapped market.”
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