Active Hotels appoint Brainbox to develop new CRM programme

Cambridge 12 July 2005: Active Hotels, one of Europe’s leading online reservation providers to the hotel industry, has appointed Brainbox, the analytical CRM division of Data Locator Group, to provide it with a detailed understanding of its customers through the creation of ‘Personas’ – a new series of customer groups.

‘Personas’ group individuals depending on their shared characteristics including needs, habits, lifestyles, demographics and behaviours.

The appointment of Brainbox will allow Active Hotels to move towards a more customer-centric business model by gaining a greater insight into customer behaviour and needs. This will support all aspects of the business from product development to customer retention strategies.

Jason Froggett, Managing Director, Brainbox comments: “Active Hotels has a great business model and is becoming truly customer-centric. With this in mind we are very much looking forward to working with them. The development of Personas will help their business fine tune their marketing strategy and make highly informed decisions regarding search and booking functionality.”

Luke Errington, Consumer Manager, Active Hotels comments: “This is a major development in the growth of our B2C business. We will use ‘Personas’ to make informed decisions about the development of new functionality and content, to help customers find great deals at over 10,000 hotels across Europe. We selected Brainbox, an analytical powerhouse, to provide us with a multi-dimensional perspective of our customer base. With their great attention to detail and dedication to understanding our business, the Brainbox team give me enormous confidence that the Personas project will be highly successful.”

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Notes for editors:

About Brainbox:
Launched in August 2004, Brainbox is an innovative new division of Data Locator Group, which has brought together some of the most innovative and experienced analysts and data strategists in the UK. The team brings together a wealth of analytical experience from companies including Vodafone, EHS Brann, OgilvyOne worldwide, and dunnhumby; companies which have worked on some of the most visionary brands in the UK. Solutions provided for our clients include: customer segmentation, lifetime value estimates, next best product analysis and customer churn forecasts.

The key ethic of all team members within Brainbox is simple: to have a passion about analytics and turning derived insight into significant incremental revenue for clients. Solutions to its clients are the result of collaborative teamwork right across Brainbox, therefore drawing on all experiences.

Our key management principles are:

1. Keep it simple
2. Demand regular, open communication
3. What it really takes to make things happen
· passion for great work done right
· disciplined enthusiasm
4. Foster a culture of changing the rules

About Data Locator Group Plc:
Data Locator Group Plc sources prospect data for multi-channel direct marketing via telephone, mail and internet. Coupled with its dynamic UK based tele-marketing operation, broking expertise and data analytics team, Data Locator is uniquely positioned to generate, source, analyse and convert data into new customers, adding tangible bottom line benefits for its many blue-chip clients. Data Locator Group PLC is the foremost supplier of all round data services to the UK direct marketing industry.

Media enquiries:
Karl Pykerman, Head of Marketing, Data Locator Group Plc, [email protected], tel: + 44 (0) 1923 281 700

About Active Hotels
Active Hotels (a priceline.com company, Nasdaq: PCLN), is one of Europe’s leading online reservation providers to the hotel industry. The company has over 10,000 hotels, which it promotes through 1,500 distribution partners, including many of the market leaders in online travel. See Active Hotels website for more details.

Media enquiries:
Mandy Zakhour, European Media Relations, Active Hotels, [email protected] tel: + 44 (0) 1223 578134