ebookers has re-launched its U.K. website offering customers greater functionality and a better user experience.
 
The new website aims to make booking decisions easier through simpler navigation and more product choice.  As an example, ebookers has tripled the number of hotels available within its inventory. Authentic hotel user reviews from thousands of properties and additional information about traveller destinations, including more hotel photos and maps also have been added.  Built on a new global technology platform, ebookers will offer customers greater speed in searching and booking.

“This is an important moment in the evolution of the ebookers brand, as we work to make it the leading travel choice for our customers in Europe,” said Steve Barnhart, President and CEO of Orbitz Worldwide, Inc.  “This new, innovative ebookers website will provide customers with more air and hotel choices and a better, faster online experience.”

The ebookers site in the United Kingdom is the first Orbitz Worldwide brand to be migrated over to the company’s new global technology platform.  The platform is one of several key strategic initiatives for Orbitz Worldwide’s growth in international markets.  The new technology is built to operate multiple consumer brands more efficiently, including multi-language and multi-currency capabilities.  The platform is also designed to enable the more rapid deployment of customer-centric technologies and services across all of Orbitz Worldwide’s international brands, including the ability to offer suppliers a global customer base.

“This new technology will help us enhance the global travel experience and grow in international markets to the benefit of ebookers’ customers,”? added Barnhart.

“41% of Europeans are currently researching and buying travel online.  We believe these leisure travellers are focused on efficient, value-orientated websites, which offer a wide range of choice,” said Alan Josephs, Managing Director for ebookers. “ebookers listened to what our customers wanted and we delivered a new website that meets the needs and expectations of today’s savvy traveller.  Customers rated price and ease-of-use high on their wish lists. To meet these demands, ebookers invested in a more modern and innovative website that has the functionality to increasingly provide more relevant content about destinations, greater travel choice through more hotel and flight inventory, improved backend technology and destination advice.”

To re-introduce the new ebookers website to its European customers, the company is planning to re-launch its brand through a comprehensive marketing campaign. The new brand campaign will help explain the benefits of booking with ebookers.com, including a new ebookers logo that has already been launched on site.  Over the next year, ebookers expects to unveil more product features that will support the new customer-centric positioning, coupled with a large integrated brand communications campaign expected to be launched in early Autumn 2007. 
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