Hotels.com, today announced it has introduced 14 new unique international versions of its hotels.com web site, each featuring state-of-the-art IP recognition technology. The implementation of the IP recognition technology recognizes users` country of origin and displays the appropriate country-specific hotels.com site.

Travelers in 14 major countries - 13 in Western Europe plus Canada - will now have the ease of booking hotel accommodations in their native language and can view rates in their local currencies. Each site also uses local formats and contains promotions unique to that specific country.

 

“This milestone event takes Hotels.com to the next level, and makes us a truly global business. Millions of travelers worldwide now have access to local versions of hotels.com making purchasing lodging online convenient and easy. We have made the technology available to all of our more than 36,000 affiliates as well. Additionally, we have implemented similar technology in our European call centers allowing our call center agents to recognize the caller`s country of origin and enable them to speak to the caller in the appropriate language. We are in the process of introducing many new country-specific versions of hotels.com in other countries worldwide,” stated Bob Diener

, president and co-founder of Hotels.com.

 

“Now, no matter when consumers in these 14 countries log onto www.hotels.com, they can view the site in their native language. The online travel industry in Europe has seen significant growth. This technology is extremely beneficial for our international clients. Our goal at Hotels.com is to make booking accommodations via the Internet as easy as possible and implementation of this IP technology substantially increases the ease of booking accommodations.

 

“A person who lives in England, for example, will see destinations on the homepage such as Edinburgh, Glasgow and Dublin and all rates will be in pounds, our Italian customers will see cities such as Rome, Milan and Naples and all rates will be in euros plus the site is in Italian,” continued Diener.

 

The new country-specific versions of the site are available for consumers in the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, France, Sweden, Denmark, Ireland, Norway, Netherlands, Belgium, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, and Canada.

 

Related stories on ITN:

(09/07/2003) Hotels.com Reaches Top Spot in Hitwise List

(02/07/2003) Hotels.com and US Airways Announce Call Transfer Program

(10/06/2003) Hotels.com Launches New Marketing Initiative

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