Iloho, an innovative travel-centric online community focusing on user-generated news stories, social networking and in-depth route reviews, is launching. Partnering with frequent flyer stalwarts FlyerTalk.com and the WebFlyer Network, Iloho offers a unique and rewarding community experience that allows its users to define travel headlines, interact with like-minded individuals and plan the perfect trip. Iloho’s content is generated wholly by its users; they choose, create and rate every single story and review ensuring that the site is continuously refreshed with the most relevant and recommended travel information.

Iloho provides travel enthusiasts, from backpackers to businessmen, with an exciting, dynamic and candid environment for networking, reviewing the latest travel news and exchanging invaluable travel advice. Members can interact with the site in a number of ways from linking to the best travel stories across the Internet, to posting unique material, to rating content by popularity, to linking with blogs and bookmarking.

Iloho also delivers a strong social-networking function that enables users to create their own online profile, comment on and review the site’s content, engage in social activities and geo-locate groups and itineraries so they know exactly what’s happening and where. To provide a fully integrated travel experience Iloho offers users a fare comparison function, in-depth route reviews and an augmented airfare service where, in addition to price, users can filter flights based on their preferred airline, plus arrival and departure times.

The ground-breaking Web 2.0 site is backed by world renowned travel expert Randy Petersen, owner of the WebFlyer Network which founded popular travel websites such as FlyerTalk.com, WebFlyer.com and InsideFlyer.com. Iloho and Petersen’s growing number of websites will engage in various forms of cross-promotion. The agreement will give FlyerTalk’s 135,000 members the option to link their forum threads to Iloho to be managed by the site’s advanced bookmarking system. In the near future, FlyerTalk’s forum members will also be able to use Iloho’s social networking tools within their community.

“Iloho is a very exciting new launch in the online travel arena, and I believe that it will be the perfect partner for our websites and our members,” said Petersen. “Our members can bring a wealth of interesting and relevant content to Iloho and stand to benefit from Iloho’s cutting-edge content management system and advanced social networking tools; our future together will be very bright.”

Iloho’s launch sponsors include Japan Airlines, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines and the WebFlyer Network. The sponsors are backing a competition celebrating Iloho’s launch to find the site’s best contributors in several different categories including: Japan Airlines’ award for “Best Japan Travel Experience”, Oasis Hong Kong Airlines’ “Dream Itinerary” award, WebFlyer Network’s “Frequent Flyer Award”, top 1000 posts, top 100 “powerful players” and top 5 groups.

Andrea Liu, Chief Executive Officer Iloho, said: “Iloho is set to inject online travel with fresh dynamism and excitement. We offer a truly unique community that incorporates the very best forum, social networking and route review functions. We are confident that Iloho will appeal to a very broad range of travellers worldwide and provide an unrivaled online experience. We are also lucky to have such fantastic launch partners and we look forward to continuing and building on these relationships.”

Mirroring Iloho’s innovative proposition the site has been built using some of the latest and most cutting-edge technology for Web 2.0. Iloho has been developed using Ruby on Rails and the site is hosted by Engine Yard, the number one deployment company for Rails technology.

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