Book hotels in real-time via your mobile phone

Reporo and Active Hotels launch UK’s first mobile hotel booking service

Cambridge, 29 September 2005: Business and leisure travellers can now find and book up to the minute accommodation on the move with the launch of the UK’s first real-time hotel booking service via mobile.

Mobile shopping service Reporo has teamed up with Active Hotels, one of Europe’s leading online hotel reservation providers, to offer this unique booking service to mobile users on the move. From rural B&Bs to five star city centre corporate hotels, users will have a choice of over 3,500 hotels across the UK. Furthermore, Active Hotels’ complete European inventory of over 11,000 hotels is set to be made available on Reporo over the coming months.

The Reporo service is the perfect solution for time-pressed business travellers and those taking spontaneous breaks and unscheduled overnight stays. The search function allows users to find a wide selection of hotels within a specified radius of their chosen location or simply search by hotel name. Full hotel information is displayed, including a photo of the hotel, a description of amenities and maps to help find the hotel.

Booking is easy, secure and completed within minutes. Reporo links directly with the live inventory on the Active Hotels server which only displays hotels where rooms are actually available.

Fast, convenient and secure, Reporo is the first mobile shopping service which can be used across multiple operator networks, including O2, Orange, T-Mobile, Virgin and Vodafone. This means that anyone with a Reporo-enabled GPRS phone can use the Reporo service, regardless of which network provides their mobile phone access.

Travellers don’t have to be tech-savvy to use Reporo; all they need is a GPRS mobile phone. In order to activate Reporo, users simply visit www.reporo.com to register their details and follow the easy instructions to get Reporo on their phone. During the initial registration process credit card details are input once online and any subsequent purchases via mobile are authorised by a personal four-digit PIN which is known only to the user.

Within seconds of completing registration, users receive a text message containing the Reporo software, and once downloaded they can use the service immediately.

Business and leisure travellers will wonder how they ever lived without Reporo, which makes spur of the moment travel a fun and stress-free experience.

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Notes to Editors

About Reporo
Reporo (www.reporo.com) is an innovative mobile shopping service which allows consumers to shop from online retailers via their mobile phone, anytime, anywhere. Reporo can be used on over 145 GPRS phones across 12 manufacturers, and is the first and only mobile shopping service which can be used over multiple mobile networks, including O2, Orange, Vodafone, T-Mobile, and Virgin.

Reporo’s unique, Java-based software is free and can be downloaded from Reporo’s website to a mobile phone in minutes. Once loaded, the phone instantly allows users to visit online retailer websites to browse for items, view images, and make a purchase. Orders are fully secure and processed via the retailer’s website, just as if shopping online. Reporo retailers include: Active Hotels, Blackwell’s, Boots (flowers), CD WOW!, Firebox.com, Kitbag, Mankind, Wine By The Case and 0800Flowers.

Reporo is a UK-based, privately held limited company, and recently completed a round of investment funding. The company has also won DTI Technology Awards for its innovative mobile shopping solution.

For more information, please contact:
Louise Andrews or Kathryn Cotsworth
Wildfire PR
020 8339 4420
[email protected]
[email protected]

About Active Hotels (Priceline Europe, part of priceline.com, NASDAQ PCLN
Active Hotels (Priceline Europe, part of priceline.com, Nasdaq: PCLN), is one of Europe’s leading online reservation providers to the hotel industry. The company has over 11,000 hotels, which it promotes through 1,500 distribution partners, including some of the market leaders in online travel. See: www.activehotels.com for more details.
In July 2005, Priceline acquired Amsterdam-based Bookings B.V. to complement its investment in Active Hotels and build on its European operations.

Combined, Active Hotels and Bookings have exclusive rates with almost 18,000 hotel properties, giving Priceline Europe a market leading position in Europe.

Media enquiries:

Mandy Zakhour, European Media Relations, Priceline Europe, [email protected] tel: + 44 (0) 1223 578134