Hotetnet.co.uk, the online hotel search and booking service, has now gone live with an extra 38,000 live bookable hotels in more than 200 countries worldwide.
This has been made possible by the agreement with Dallas-based Pegasus Solutions, Inc., a leading provider of end-to-end reservation distribution solutions to the global hotel industry, was signed in January 2001.
The agreement positions hotelnet.co.uk as a key player in the UK online reservation market. It brings the total number of hotels listed on the site to 40,000, including 18 of the world’s largest hotel groups, and aggressively places hotelnet.co.uk at the forefront of the online hotel booking marketplace.
Hotelnet.co.uk customers will be able to select and book accommodations online through direct access to the central reservations systems (CRSs) of the hotels represented in Pegasus Solution’s Online Distribution Database, ranging from luxurious five-star hotels to independent family-run properties.
Customers will benefit from secure instant real-time reservations, 24 hours a day, and increased functionality of the search engine on the site. Comprehensive property information will also be available, including enhanced mapping indicating the accommodation in relation to its geographical surrounds and detailed street maps of major cities, rates, photos.
Gideon Dean, senior vice president of Pegasus Solutions’ worldwide sales and account management group, comments, “We are delighted to be part of hotelnet.co.uk’s already successful online search and booking service and believe our solution will add a new flavour to the site in the shape of an additional 38,000 quality hotels. More than 40 percent of these hotels are located outside the United States. We added several thousand more properties to our Online Distribution Database last year and believe hotelnet.co.uk’s customers will find all their tastes are catered for.”
David Ranby, marketing manager for hotelnet.co.uk, says, “Since the agreement was signed earlier in the year, we have worked very closely with Pegasus to develop a comprehensive and unique service to our customers. This illustrates our dedication to providing quality, branded accommodation worldwide; names that our customers can rely on.”
Ranby concludes, “We have recently redesigned our site to include more visually appealing web pages, user-friendly services and improved registration with search engines. We have also launched an interactive Guestbook facility where visitors to our site, who have actually booked hotel accommodation, can write a review on their stay and comment on the hotel’s facilities. Other visitors to the hotel can also write a review and vote if they feel the same or disagree about the previous review, giving users more of a say. The facility also allows hoteliers to respond to any comments. We believe this, along with our dedicated hotel service, are the key ingredients to our continued record-breaking success.”
Unlike many other travel sites, hotelnet.co.uk’s content is exclusively accommodation-based. This allows the site to list a much wider selection of hotels, from two to five star and to provide the customer with all the information they need to feel comfortable with their booking.
The site has been running successfully for over six years and is the first stop for finding a hotel in the UK, Europe and North America. Currently over 90 per cent of the hotels on the site provide live online bookings, with this figure increasing to 100 per cent in 2001. Customers are able to check availability online and bookings are confirmed there and then - there is no waiting for confirmation by email or post.
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