Following its recent investments from Europ@web and CNN, Leisureplanet, the leading international online travel services company today announced that its new web sites containing a totally redesigned home page, vastly improved user interface and screen flows and a new state of the art booking engine platform will be launched early in the first quarter of 2000.

The development was spearheaded by Leisureplanet’s new site production team headed by Noel Holmes who joined the company from Travelocity in July. Reflecting the international nature of Leisureplanet’s endeavour, a team of expert third parties were involved in or associated with the development. These third party experts include Net Effect (Benelux), HitchHiker Software GmbH (Germany) and Worldspan (USA).

The site development includes the following improvements which will establish Leisureplanet’s sites at the forefront among online travel services companies:

Improved user interface, screen flows, speed of delivery and overall convenience.

Flight searches with a unitary display of the best published air fares and private negotiated fares.

Hotel search with a unitary interface for Leisureplanet’s 10 000 independent hotels and chain/group hotels available from Worldspan.

Elimination of registration to access pricing and availability, and an overall smoother registration experience.

Significantly improved overall navigation and access to resources including speed booking for air and hotels.

“We are extremely pleased with the work delivered by our production team and by our team of expert partners and are confident that Leisureplanet will be setting a new standard for international leisure travel web sites.” said Pierre Kleinhans, chief executive officer of Leisureplanet.

The project also involves placing Leisureplanet’s web sites onto an Oracle 8i database platform and the deployment of Vignette’s StoryServer? content management application.

This will benefit Leisureplanet through rapid deployment of multi-lingual sites on multiple shop fronts, effective management of local content and speedy update functionality, a powerful personalisation capability enabling automatic adaptation of site content to the traveller’s preferences and platform independence.

Peter M. Maronier, President and CEO of Net Effect said: “We are very pleased to be able to use our extensive experience with products like Oracle and Vignette to leverage Leisureplanet’s online activities. Working with Leisureplanet enables us to expand our leading high-end web development position outside the Benelux. Leisureplanet is also an excellent example of a successful E-conomy company by using leading edge technology to drive business objectives”.

The project also features the development of an Internet booking engine for online flight bookings, which will strengthen Leisureplanet’s travel service offerings through HithHiker’s negotiated air fare expertise. The new booking engine includes a fare loading capability allowing Leisureplanet to make the best use of air fares negotiated by its international network of travel partners who are air consolidators in markets all around the world. This fare loading capability also gives a special front end functionality, creating seamless integration between negotiated air fares and published air fares in flight search results.

Thomas Boffo, managing director of HitchHiker Software said: “Our agreement to work with Leisureplanet for the development of their Internet booking engine creates a powerful partnership in Internet travel services. HitchHiker’s key strengths lie in distribution, our ability to interface with multiple systems and manage complex fares databases - this fully complements the strategy of Leisureplanet to offer the most competitive fares products in local markets.”

“We are especially gratified by Worldspan’s contribution to this project. They have at all times been a progressive GDS partner for Leisureplanet and we consider Worldspan to be an ideal GDS partner for a travel e-commerce business” said Pierre Kleinhans, chief executive officer of Leisureplanet.

——-