WEGO.COM ADDS “HOTEL SPOTLIGHT” PROGRAM TO PROVIDE PREMIUM BRANDING OPPORTUNITIES FOR INDIVIDUAL HOTELS
“Hotel Spotlights” allow marketing managers to graphically showcase hotel properties to active travel shoppers

Singapore – 13 October, 2008 – Asia-Pacific’s leading travel search engine, Wego.com today launched “Hotel Spotlights”, a new marketing program created for hotel marketing managers to prominently feature their property and specific promotions at the top of Wego’s hotel search results for a given city or location.

Hotel Spotlights appear prominently at the top of Wego hotel search results pages for a given city. A Hotel Spotlight consists of a large carefully cropped photo of a hotel, 2 lines of descriptive or promotional text and an image overlay stating the hotel’s name and best room rate.  Hotel Spotlights will also be syndicated across the network of Wego powered travel search on major portals across Asia-Pacific including those run by Yahoo!, MSN, Lonely Planet and NEWS.com.au.

“Hotel marketing and brand managers have been asking us how they can better showcase their properties to Wego’s hundreds of thousands online hotel shoppers in a way that powerfully conveys the unique visual identity of each property”, said Wego founder and Chief Commercial Officer, Craig Hewett, “We’ve designed the Wego Hotel Spotlight in direct response to these requests from our hotel partners.”

A maximum of three properties will be featured for each city. Priority for the limited Hotel Spotlight slots will be given to the larger more popular hotels in each city. Hotel Spotlights are being sold on a monthly basis.

“We expect there will be something of a land grab beginning today by hotel marketing managers to secure this prime real estate on Wego for their properties, particularly in the major tourist and business destinations”, continued Hewett. “We think the Hotel Spotlight program will be particularly attractive to those properties that have already made the investment in professional photography and for new properties that need to generate awareness and sales during the soft-launch or pre-opening period.”

The first Hotel Spotlights can already be seen running on Wego.com Singapore hotels search results pages and feature the Singapore Pan Pacific, Holiday Inn Atrium, and the recently opened Crowne Plaza Changi Airport.

An example of Hotel Spotlight can be found at: http://www.wego.com/images/advertise/ad1-hotelspotlight.gif 

Interested hotels can find more information online at: http://www.wego.com/advertise

About Wego.com

Wego.com (formerly Bezurk.com) allows travelers to search for flights, hotels, packages, travel deals and travel research across 100+ travel websites in the time that it normally takes to search just one. Wego searches travel websites in real-time so that the latest pricing and availability are shown. Travelers are then linked through to partner websites to book. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives from Intercontinental Hotels Group (NYSE: IHG), Yahoo! (NASDAQ: YHOO), Priceline (NASDAQ: PCLN) and ZUJI. News Digital Media, the Australian digital arm of News Limited and part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), is an investor. In 2007, Business 2.0 magazine named Bezurk as one of “31 of the world’s hottest international web startups”. For more information, please visit http://www.wego.com/about.
 

HONG KONG - September 2008 - Preferred Hotel Group partners with one of Asia Pacific’s leading travel meta-search engines, Wego.com, to further extend its reach to travelers booking hotels online. Through this partnership, Wego.com will drive online bookers directly to Preferred Hotel Group’s brand websites including www.PreferredHotels.com, www.PreferredBoutique.com, www.SummitHotels.com, and www.SterlingHotels.com.

Wego searches across 100+ travel websites in the time that it normally takes to search just one. This partnership will enable Preferred Hotel Group to promote its global portfolio of over 650 independent hotels and resorts to online visitors using Wego.com. Consumers will see the latest pricing and room availabilities for Preferred Hotel Group member properties.

“We recognize the importance of partnerships with vertical search engines as a cost-effective channel to increase our online distribution, as well as promoting brand awareness directly to potential guests. There is no doubt that Wego will assist in significantly increasing our online market share through rate transparency,” commented Mark Wong, Vice President, Marketing and Development - Asia Pacific.

Wego Founder & Chief Commercial Officer Craig Hewett said, “We are delighted to be working with Preferred Hotel Group as their portfolio offers our users a selection of the finest independent hotel and resort properties worldwide. This year is set to be a year of great growth for Wego, in terms of new product features and increasing user traffic, all of which are sure to benefit partners like Preferred Hotel Group.”

About Preferred Hotel Group
Celebrating 40 years of excellence, Preferred Hotel Group is a global leader in the hospitality industry, delivering high-performance sales, marketing, and technology solutions to more than 650 independent hotels and resorts in over 75 countries. Its family of brands represents a collection of the finest hotels in the world and include: Preferred Hotels® & Resorts (www.PreferredHotels.com), Preferred Boutique™ (www.PreferredBoutique.com), Summit Hotels & Resorts™ (www.SummitHotels.com), Sterling Hotels™ (www.SterlingHotels.com) and Historic Hotels of America™ (www.HistoricHotels.org). For more information, please visit www.PreferredHotelGroup.com.

In September 2007, the company entered the luxury real estate market with the launch of Preferred Residences™ - a membership and exchange program for luxury shared ownership resorts that provides an exceptional level of service and amenities. Properties are held to exacting standards derived from the same Preferred Global Standards of Excellence™ on which the company has built its 40-year heritage in the hospitality industry. For more information, please visit www.PreferredResidences.com.

ASPAC MEDIA CONTACT:
Christine Cheong
Manager, Communications - Asia Pacific
Preferred Hotel Group
Tel: +852 3111 1898 | Fax: +852 3115 7770
CCheong@PreferredHotelGroup.com

About Wego.com
Wego.com (formerly Bezurk.com) allows travelers to search for flights, hotels, travel deals and travel research across 100+ travel websites in the time that it normally takes to search just one. Wego searches travel websites in real-time so that the latest pricing and availability are shown. Travelers are then linked through to partner websites to book. Wego.com was founded in 2005 by former executives from Intercontinental Hotels Group, Yahoo!, Priceline and ZUJI. News Digital Media, the Australian digital arm of News Limited and part of News Corp (NYSE: NWS), is an investor. In 2007, Business 2.0 magazine named Bezurk as one of “31 of the world’s hottest international web startups.” For more information, please visit www.wego.com/about.

Our smart developers built a very useful CNY travel tool which gives travellers a quick overview of the prices of flights and hotels to popular destinations - that are still available during this festive period. While many Singaporeans and Malaysians have already planned and booked their travel packages way in advance for this festive holiday, busy executives and travel procrastinators will welcome this new travel tool as it could be their way out this CNY break.

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