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News of 12/01/2010

FastBooking integrates social media analysis tools into its online business solution for hoteliers with FastBooking Brand Vision

Hotel reviews on social media sites have a significant impact on purchase decisions. FastBooking will soon offer hoteliers powerful tools to analyze social media and develop a strategy to improve business and brand credibility, and position themselves competitively.

Paris—January 12, 2010—FastBooking and Circosare joining forces in a strategic partnership that adds cutting-edge brand analytics and social media management tools to the FastBooking portfolio of online business solutions for hoteliers. Through this partnership, FastBooking becomes the only company in Europe to offer a full suite of online marketing and social media analytic solutions to individual hotels and hotel chains. FastBooking Brand Vision social media tools are the first step in the roll-out of the company’s comprehensive UGC*- and web-analytics strategy. Both FastBooking and Circos are leaders in the hotel technology industry. FastBooking provides advanced Internet booking systems and e-marketing services to increase online bookings, while Circos provides customized monitoring and analysis of brand data from social media so that hotel owners can make superior business decisions.

According to a recent study by The Nielsen Company, social media acts as an information filter and accounts for 18% of online content discovery. “Hotels now need to manage their online brand perception which is heavily influenced by what consumers see or read on sites like TripAdvisor ®, Twitter, YouTube and Flickr®,” notes Jean Robberecht, FastBooking Vice President of Strategic Accounts.

With the integration of Circos’ Brand Karma software in FastBooking Brand Vision, FastBooking will enable hoteliers to track what is being said about their hotel across influential social media websites. Powered by sophisticated analysis of user-generated content, the software reports brand insights in easy-to-understand graphs and charts, and links the hotel’s social media to actual business metrics like bookings, satisfaction and loyalty.

“Monitoring and analysis of social media and online perceptions are just the first step of the larger strategy,” says Jean Robberecht.

“Social media can be a hotel’s best friend or worst enemy,” says Morris Sim, Co-Founder and CEO of Circos. “Brand Karma makes it easy for hoteliers to grasp the business impact of these conversations and turns social media into a competitive asset, which fits perfectly with FastBooking’s services.”

A clear picture of a hotel’s image in social media Hoteliers working with FastBooking will be able to use this online dashboard to: • Pinpoint their brand’s true strengths and weaknesses; • Compare their social media perception to that of their competitors; • Act on social media to improve operations and increase bookings; • Differentiate their brand messaging via website content, organic search engine results, and more targeted search engine marketing; • Determine what each department at a property needs to do to improve bookings, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty.

This new service expected to be available early in 2010.

Deborah Gallin
Senior Press and Communications Manager
+33 1 44 71 88 83
dgallin@fastbooking.com

Since 2000, FastBooking has been the preferred partner to hotelkeepers worldwide, driving more visitors to hotel websites and converting these visitors to direct bookings. FastBooking products and services optimize a hotel’s business by maximizing highly profitable direct website bookings, then rationalize inventory and pricing across all online sales channels. The company even optimizes business through legacy GDS/IDS with a cost effective service.

Headquartered in Paris with subsidiaries in Italy, USA, Asia and India, the company has E. de Rothschild as its anchor investor. It employs 160 persons worldwide and has gained the trust of more than 5,200 hotels.

For more information, visit the FastBooking website at www.fastbooking.net

Circos is a leading business analytics company providing the most customized and relevant interpretation of brand data. Its flagship product, Brand Karma, maps a brand’s perception in social media to internal performance metrics, uncovers new product and service differentiators to help attract and retain customers, and presents brand owners with insightful recommendations to increase ROI. Focused on the hotel and tourism industries, Circos helps leading hospitality brands to drive sales, improve guest satisfaction, and credibly position their brand online. Founded in 2006, Circos is based in the United States and Singapore.

For more information, visit www.circos.com.

FastBooking is a registered trademark of FastBooking. Other trademarks and trade names may be used in this document to refer to either the entities claiming the marks and names or their products. FastBooking disclaims any proprietary interest in trademarks and trade names other than its own. Apple, the Apple logo, Mac, Mac OS, Macintosh, iPhone, iPod touch and iTunes are trademarks of Apple.