Press release

HRS consistently cuts the cost of business and private travel

Cologne, March 2004. The Hotel Reservation Service (HRS) has steadily expanded its market share for many years thanks to a keen sense of the changes on the business travel market and general economic developments. With more than 31 years of experience and eight years on the Internet as a specialist hotel reservation provider, HRS is now one of the most important operators in its sector, reining in costs for companies and increasing turnover for hotels.

Increasing pressure from the stock market and tense economic conditions have focussed ever greater attention on the cost of business travel to companies. The aim now is to spend as little time and money as possible on each business trip. But it's not only the travel management experts of multinational companies that are confronted by this problem. SMEs are also on the lookout for flexible ways to make hotel reservations - as are private travellers. The HRS best-buy principle is therefore the ideal way to find the cheapest rates in partner hotels. HRS has now provided companies with yet another way to cut costs and reduce workloads in organising conferences and special events: a free online tool that gives companies direct access to suitable hotels on the Internet.

With a worldwide selection of hotels, transparent, up-to-date prices, wide-ranging offers, simple booking procedures, fast reaction to customer requests and a complete lack of bureaucracy, HRS goes a long way towards satisfying the needs of companies and acting in the interests of business and private travellers alike. Even firms with annually negotiated corporate rates now use the HRS system to handle all their hotel bookings worldwide. As a result, more than 10,000 companies are currently directly connected to the HRS system.

For their part, more than 130,000 partner hotels are pleased that they are entirely free to set their prices and availability - and yet remain 100% flexible at all times. To this end they are provided with the free online HRS hotel self-administration (HSA) tool, a simple way to adapt prices and the number of bookable rooms - several times a day, if necessary - according to daily fluctuations in occupancy and other conditions.

This application was specially developed with industry in mind and can be built into company-own intranets free of charge or used directly via encrypted Internet partner access at www.hrs.de. HRS also provides its corporate clients with the means to carry out a range of statistical analyses. Branch offices and affiliates, for example, are pinpointed geographically to enable customers to find the nearest hotel to their intended destination, while hrs.de has also been offering area-based searching for many years. By slimming down procedures, HRS helps companies cut costs dramatically. At the same time, partner hotels profit from the constant increases in turnover HRS brings them.

Part of HRS's success is down to open, direct, go-getter sales policies that have always been at the cutting edge of technological developments and stretch back to the dawn of mobile telephony. HRS has always recognised the market trends correctly, and as the leading company on the European hotel reservation market, has grown consistently year after year. "Our policy of investing in the future no matter whether the conditions are good or bad will continue to bear fruit", says Robert Ragge.

Contact:

HOTEL RESERVATION SERVICE (HRS)
Robert Ragge GmbH
Presseabteilung
Blaubach 32

D-50676 Koeln

Tel.: +49 18055 2077-505
Fax: +49 18055 2077-557