HotelClub.net’s Multilingual Capabilities Speak for Themselves

Sydney, 12 February 2003 – Australia’s largest online hotel reservation provider, HotelClub.net, is becoming a global leader by literally speaking the same language as its customers. Hotelclub.net is catering to the growing number of Internet users in non-English speaking countries by offering multilingual services, localising its services with fantastic results.

In January 2003, Hotelclub.net saw an increase of 320% on last year’s volume and sold close to 60,000 room nights. In Hong Kong alone visitation to the site was eight times higher than last year. Such results in visitation and sales can largely be attributed to international markets, particularly non-English speaking.

Statistics indicate that English speakers are becoming a minority on the Internet. In October 2001 ZDnet reported that 33.3% of Internet users speak a European language and 25.6% of Internet users speak an Asian language.

Hotelclub.net has catered to the immense growth and adoption of the Internet in non-English speaking countries. It has just introduced services in Spanish, complementing the existing English, French, German and Chinese options on the site. By mid 2004 Japanese, Italian, Portugese and Korean will also be available.

Chloe Lim, HotelClub’s Marketing Manager Asia Pacific said: “Few of our competitors and travel related websites are able to localise services in key languages. This will obviously restrict their growth into markets such as Europe which are divided by geography as much as language.

“We foresee that developing HotelClub.net’s multilingual offering will further build on the 70% of international bookings that we have out of the United States, Europe and Asia.

“Our large, existing international customer base can be largely attributed to the sites’ unique multilingual features, but it is also heavily complemented by the in-depth international hotel content and easy to use booking engine, “ she said.

Hotelclub.net has been profitable since its inception and uses the latest in information technology. Its ability to expand into international markets has been assisted by the fact that HotelClub.net runs on its own proprietary software.

Based in Sydney Australia, HotelClub.net has offices in Moscow, Paris, Bristol and Berne with 3,000 affiliates include small community organisations, travel agents, and large internet portals such as Yahoo (Australia, United Kingdom, Germany and Singapore), AltaVista (Australia, New Zealand and Asia),MSN ( Singapore and Malaysia), Lycos Asia, Looksmart Australia and F2.

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For further information, please contact Nicole Reading or Lisa McCoy
(02) 9231 1103/[email protected].

Hotelclub.net is Australia’s largest online accommodation provider. A full accommodation provider, HotelClub.net is a “full service” website offering hotel bookings for up to 12 months ahead. It offers a choice of over 4,500 hotels – at savings of up to 60% – in 35 countries and 700 cities worldwide. It is the only Australian website to feature downloadable maps of hotel locations. HotelClub.net a global online travel/accommodation service and features its services in five languages, French, German, Chinese and Spanish. Its head office is in Sydney and customer and product offices in UK, France, Italy, Russia and Vietnam. Personal and corporate memberships to HotelClub.net are available that provide additional discounts and services.