Taking it to the Streets

Sydney, 10 December 2002 – Australia’s largest accommodation e-wholesale site HotelClub.net (www.hotelclub.net) has become the first Australian based online company to introduce scalable, downloadable maps.

Featuring key cities of the world, including all Australian capital cities as well as international cities such as London, Paris, New York and Berlin, the extremely detailed maps allow travellers to tailor their own individual maps by selecting either high or low scale views of selected hotel locations.

Users can zoom from a citywide scale to see where the airport might be, right down to a city block view to see if the hotel is on a one-way street. Then by clicking on the corresponding icon, travellers can export these scaled maps to their PDA, email or printer, so a targeted map of the hotel location is always handy, without having to flick frantically through local guidebooks and directories.

Powered by French firm, Maporama – the world’s leading provider of location-centric applications – the maps that appear on the HotelClub.net site are so technically advanced they provide location information for very complex cities such as London and soon Bangkok.

Attracting over 25,000 unique visitors a day with 60 per cent of this traffic coming from offshore users, HotelClub.net says since the introduction of Maporama’s maps onto the site in October this year, the domain’s “look to book” ratio has more than doubled for those who use the View Map button.

“HotelClub.net continually strives to be the best of the best in online accommodation. We know people want location information to help them make a hotel purchasing decision but we have to cover over 250 cities worldwide,” said HotelClub.net’s director of marketing, Mr Tim Etheridge.

“We looked long and hard to find a map provider who could meet our global content requirement in a scalable format. Partnering with Maporama means we’re able to bundle together a cutting edge location-centric application with our deep accommodation inventory of over 4,500 hotels across 35 countries worldwide.

“This dynamic mapping feature has been extremely well received by customers because they are able to book hotels knowing exactly where the property is in relation to the airport as well as up-close landmarks. They can then download their tailored map for use on their travels – all within a few free clicks on our website.”

Within the next two months HotelClub.net will be adding some of the most complex cities in the world to the site including Bangkok and Tokyo – notorious navigational nightmares for travellers because of the density of their streets and lane ways.

The Maporama maps are also in the French, German and Chinese versions of the HotelClub.net site in each of these languages.

#Ends#

HotelClub.net Fast Facts· Largest online accommodation provider in Australia· Offers savings of up to 60% on accommodation· 60% of bookings come from overseas with customers often wanting accommodation in the United States, Europe and Asia· An average of 750,000 unique visitors go to the site monthly

About HotelClub.net
HotelClub.net (www.hotelclub.net) is a global online travel/accommodation service with its head office in Sydney with customer and product offices in UK, France, Italy, Russia and Vietnam and is a “full service” website offering hotel bookings for up to 12 months ahead.
Users can also book discount car rental, day tours and soon discount travel insurance on the site. The site has scalable hotel location maps for the main cities of the world. The site offers consumers a choice of over 4,500 hotels – at highly competitive rates – in 35 countries worldwide, with accommodation choices ranging from five star hotels in the hustle and bustle of downtown New York to pensions in the ancient streets of Florence.

About Maporama
Maporama is a leading provider of Location-Centric applications. Location-centric applications enable organisations to turn their location data into profit, accelerating consumers’ purchase decision cycle by helping them find specific products at specific stores while sharing store-specific information internally with employees and externally with suppliers.
Maporama’s product offer includes advanced mapping and routing turnkey products as well as a powerful and complete API library for developers. In order to guarantee customer flexibility and autonomy, Maporama provides Maporama Partner Solutions, an integrated online administration suite.
Maporama is the only location-centric solutions provider to localise an address of over a billion of consumers around the world offering, in addition to industry standard European and North American coverage, detailed street maps of Eastern Europe, Australia, Africa, South America. From its inception in 2000, Maporama continues to lead innovation in its industry. In 2000, Maporama was first to announce pre-packaged solutions per industry sector. In 2001, the company was also first to announce location-based advertising products.
Today, the company is building a unique approach to enterprise-wide location-centric applications, compliant with any existing communication platform (Web, Wireless, PDAs, set-top-boxes) as well as with any existing cellular or landline telephone device through speech technology.
Maporama has more than 500 customers in over 15 countries including Yahoo!, Aventis, Europcar, Dr Martens, Estée Lauder, Thomson Multimedia, UBS Warburg, Diageo…
Headquartered in Paris (France), Maporama markets its products in Europe and in the USA.
www.maporama.com
wap.maporama.com
pda.maporama.com

For more information about Maporama:
Dan Chappell, Andrew Lloyd & Associates – +44 (0)1273 675100 – [email protected]
Libor Cerny, Maporama – +33 (0)1 44 84 10 22 – [email protected]
http://www.maporama.com

For further information please contact:
Lisa McCoy / Nicole Reading
Icon Communications
Tel: 02 9231 1103, 0414 842 387
Email: [email protected], [email protected]