lastminute.com
, the online provider of travel and leisure solutions,
today announces details of its new lastminute.com hotels extranet,
designed so hotel accommodation providers can streamline customer
booking confirmation and enable simpler uploading and viewing of
available inventory.

The new system is available across
lastminute.com`s nine international markets.
Built by lastminute.com`s own in-house team of technical experts, the
extranet means hotels supplying accommodation via lastminute.com will
be able to amend room availability and prices online themselves.  The
increased efficiency provided by the new system will benefit hotels
suppliers and customers alike - hotels will be able to monitor and
upload their availability at any time, therefore providing a more
fully comprehensive service to customers.

The system will also provide cost savings for the lastminute.com
group by streamlining existing back end processes.

lastminute.com UK managing director Helen Webb says, “We anticipate
that by the end of 2002, 70 percent of lastminute.com accommodation
suppliers will be using the new hotels extranet system.  By the end
of 2003, we expect that all lastminute.com accommodation suppliers
will be using the online service and customers will find an even more
reliable service when they book hotels via lastminute.com.”

Darren Evans, Marketing Manager, Red Carnation Hotel Group, believes
the new lastminute.com hotels extranet provides an improved service
for customers - and helps the hotel chain sell more hotel rooms than
ever before.

“We`re delighted with the new system.  It`s easy to use and means we
can update availability ourselves - offering customers even more
up-to-the-minute availability through lastminute.com,” says Darren
Evans.

Related stories on ITN:

(10/05/2002) lastminute.com announces Revolutionary Voice Automated Hotel Reservation System

(12/10/2001) Lastminute.com lets hotels update availability with speech recognition software

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