Online bookings are still booming in the travel sector. In particular for business customers the importance of online booking systems increases constantly (business travel analysis 2007 of “Verband deutsches Reisemanagement e. V.”). In 2006, the total costs for business travel rose up to Euro 47.4 bn., which means an annual percentage increase of 3.7 per cent. The share of overnight costs accounted for EUR 11.9 bn. of the total travel costs, looking at just German business customers in 2006. Bearing these figures in mind it is hardly surprising that companies are considering more closely the expenses of their business travel activities. Huge savings capacity can be realized by travel managers who take the opportunity to net-work, exchange ideas and permanently further educate themselves. That is what ITB Busi-ness Travel Days offer for five days from 5th until 9th March 2008 in Berlin: ITB Business Travel Days is exactly the right event to visit for anyone who has to book, negotiate or coordinate business trips in a company. Providers of business travel services will meet employees responsible for travel budgets – hence essential for anyone working in the business travel sector.

To facilitate hotel bookings with best price guarantees for exhibitors as well as for visitors, the hotel.de booking module was implemented in the homepage of ITB Business Travel Days under www.itb-kongress.de/businesstravel. In doing so, the hotel provider guarantees a maximum transparency in offer and price, so that the visitors to ITB Business Travel Days saves time and costs when booking a hotel. Additionally, the traveller can always be sure of finding the lowest or most suitable price for that day due to the daily updated hotel offer.

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hotel.de AG

hotel.de with its international brand TravelRes runs a free of charge hotel reservation service for companies and private users on www.hotel.de, www.travelres.com, www.travelres.fr, www.travelres.es, hotel.at and www.hotel.ch. The company offers 210,000 hotels worldwide to be booked online. Since January 2007, hotel.de has also been offering conferences. Therefore, the company had taken over the conference data base, the online booking tool and the customer base of intergerma Marketing GmbH & Co. KG. Compared to other booking channels, hotel.de/TravelRes customers benefit from considerable cost savings (for business customers up to 40%). Additionally, all available rates for every single hotel are always displayed (e.g. promotional rates, corporate or weekend rates), so that the customer can choose the lowest or best-fitting rate. Another major advantage of hotel.de/TravelRes is the fact that booking confirmations are sent right into the hotel’s computer - making a reservation fast, safe and reliable. This is enabled by hotel.de/TravelRes’ unique integration of the hotels' central reservation systems (so-called CRS) under one consistent user surface. Well-known companies, such as Procter & Gamble, SAP AG, Texas Instruments Inc. And Ernst & Young AG already use the hotel.de/TravelRes corporate application.

TravelRes

TravelRes is the international brand of hotel.de AG. This brand was established in 2006 for pushing ahead its expansion into the European countries. In this context the company has also reserved all relevant country domains. For supporting customer and hotel acquisition hotel.de has already set up offices in London, Paris and Barcelona, to be followed by other important countries. The strong customer loyalty and the high ratio of business customers facilitate hotel.de´s entry into the new markets as many foreign-based subsidiaries or parent enterprises of German companies contracted by hotel.de already have been using TravelRes since its activation. Therefore this clientele are the first potential customers. The aim is to establish TravelRes as the leading online hotel reservation service for business customers in the foreign markets mentioned and – step by step – in Europe as a whole.