“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.

Australia’s leading online shopping comparison website Shopping.com has announced its partnership with the Asia-Pacific search engine, Wego.com. The partnership will result in the launch of a travel category on Shopping.com to be powered by Wego.com. The partnership will see Shopping.com become a one-stop shop for people’s living needs from travel, to finance and shopping for goods.

Under the new agreement, Wego.com will give Shopping.com users the opportunity to search over a hundred travel websites to compare airlines, travel agents, hotel chains and accommodation quickly at one easy-to-use location.
The partnership with Wego.com is expected to generate a boost in visitors and an even more complete comparison shopping experience on Shopping.com, which is already Australia’s number one comparison shopping site with over one million unique visitors per month.

Robert Tomkinson, Director at Shopping.com says, “I am thrilled to be able to announce our partnership with leading travel search engine site, Wego.com. With the travel industry in Australia worth approximately $10 billion per year, there is a clear and growing consumer need for easy to find information and the best deals online. By offering this service, Shopping.com now provides Australians a full range of products to satisfy every online shopping desire, from travel, to financial products, to electronics, clothing and gifts.”

Craig Hewett, Founder and Chief Commercial Officer of Wego.com said, “Wego offers the most comprehensive price comparisons for travel products, allowing users to search across multiple travel sites to help them find the best deals. We’re delighted to enhance the user experience of Shopping.com users by offering Wego’s search capabilities.”

For More Information on Shopping.com please contact:
Mike Maurice
02 8303 6464
mike@zing.net.au

About Shopping.com
Shopping.com makes online shopping simple and convenient by bringing a comprehensive set of products from all across the Web to one accessible starting point – helping consumers easily find what they need in less time. Shopping.com provides shoppers with unbiased product reviews and useful search tools to make it easy to buy the right products at the right price. Shopping.com has created an informative and trusted shopping destination which encourages shoppers to make buying decisions with confidence.

About Wego.com
Wego.com (formerly Bezurk.com) and its Australia site wego.com.au allow travellers 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.

October is near and you will be happy to know that October has 2 public holidays in Singapore, which are on the 1st of Oct - Hari Raya Puasa and the 28th of Oct - Deepavali. If you haven’t planned a short trip yet, here are some vacation ideas that might be of interest.

1 - Take a short shopping trip with your partner in Hongkong. Singapore Airfares to Hongkong starting from SGD $128*.
2 - Relax and enjoy the day at the beaches in Phuket, with Airfares from Singapore to Phuket starting from SGD $290*. 
3 - Visit Tokyo Disneyland and re-live your childhood moments. Flights to Tokyo starting from SGD $250*.

*Prices are subjected to changes. For up to date, real time pricing, do conduct a live search at Wego.com.