Pegasus Solutions
has announced plans to release a significant update to its NetBooker booking engine, which enables Web sites to connect directly to hotel reservation systems for online reservations.ÊÊ

NetBooker is a hosted, online Internet booking engine offered to hotel and travel portal companies that operate their own Web sites.Ê The new version is planned to be available for implementation on October 1.Ê

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“NetBooker 4 represents a leap forward in our online booking technology and offers our customers an abundance of new features at truly cost-effective pricing,” said Bob Boles, executive vice president of sales and marketing for Pegasus.Ê “Moreover, the state-of-the-art design of the NetBooker engine allows both hotel and other travel distributors to make sure their preferred revenue channel has the features that travel consumers demand from an online experience, encouraging essential repeat business and long-term customer loyalty.”
NetBooker 4 will add significant functionality improvements, including:
*The ability for hotel and travel portals to customize NetBooker’s look and feel so that it will seamlessly integrate within their site, including the opportunity to support co-branded graphic looks for corporate partnerships.


*Flexible Web site integration options that will give the hotel or travel portals the ability to host a quick availability checking feature from their home page.


*Full multi-lingual support, including rate and room-type descriptions, and e-mail confirmations, in French, German and Spanish.Ê Support for additional languages will be added, including double-byte character languages such as Japanese.


*Itinerary builder feature, which will enable consumers to make multiple bookings in one shopping session, and includes automatic currency conversion for cross-currency itineraries.


*Integrated traveler Web profiles, which will allow consumers to create and retrieve their current and previous bookings, and to communicate their preferences and personal information consistently.


*Customer communications tools, including HTML confirmation e-mails, consumer-friendly messages and customized terms and conditions.


*Geographic search capability for travel portals, which will allow consumers to set criteria and see results for a comprehensive property search, using the Pegasus Online Distribution Database.

*For hotel companies who use Pegasus’ RezView central reservation system (CRS), a soft date search will be available, which will enable searches across a range of arrival dates, which also features a color-coded calendar from which consumers will be able to select their preferred arrival date.
The NetBooker service provides an integrated Internet booking engine for online hotel reservations without the responsibilities and overhead of developing and hosting an engine.Ê For Pegasus customers who use its RezView CRS, NetBooker connects directly to RezView through an XML interface.Ê For customers who use another CRS, NetBooker connects through Pegasus UltraDirect XML interface to their existing CRS.ÊÊ
The NetBooker engine helps hotels and travel portals manage reservations while they add revenue, save on distribution costs, promote their brand, market properties, communicate with customers and build direct relationships with them.Ê The engine offers these benefits:

*Ability to generate revenue directly from the customer’s own site.
*A lower financial and time investment, due to the fully hosted, subscription ASP service.Ê Pegasus handles design, development, implementation and maintenance.
*Enhanced User Convenience, Presentation and Property Search features through subscription to one or more optional modules.
*Enhanced customer communication and tracking.
*Seamless processing of secured and negotiated rates used by corporate clients, consortia and travel agencies.
*Enhanced security and reporting, including operation in SSL secure mode throughout.
Boles said: “We are delighted with the flexibility that this update will offer and plan to also incorporate NetBooker into our hotel representation services, including Utell by Pegasus? and Unirez by Pegasus?.”
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