Maporama chosen for Accor hotels Web site

PARIS -- Maporama, a leading provider of online location-centric applications, has been chosen by the global hotel company Accor to provide the online hotel locator for the Accor Hotels' reservation Web site. The two companies said the new agreement will enable Internet users to localize, using a Web browser, all Accor hotels for a destination of choice.

Users will key in an address and Maporama provides a detailed street level map indicating all nearby Accor hotels. Alternatively, users can also start a search by selecting a category of points of interest or landmarks, such as airports, historical monuments, amusement parks. Or, travelers can enter a keyword or phrase, such as "Eiffel Tower." The result is a list of localized hotels containing their name and street address.

Once identifying their hotel of choice, Internet users can then opt to reserve a room online, generate a detailed turn-by-turn itinerary, or visit their desired hotel's online presentation. All maps and itineraries provided by Maporama can be printed in a printer-friendly format and so the traveler can make use of the printouts while on the move.

Detailed itinerary

Accor said its customers also benefit from the ability to plan their trip by generating a detailed itinerary between two addresses of choice. Once again, in a single click, Maporama provides a detailed road book accompanied by a list of Accor hotels near to a selected destination. Each step in the resulting itinerary is enhanced with an accompanying direct link to a listing of nearby Accor hotels. This feature is available for all of Europe and North America.

"Maporama is proud to announce Accor Hotels as a new customer," said Laurent Vermot-Gauchy, Maporama CEO & President. "The hotel locator facility we have integrated into www.Accorhotels.com implements Maporama's most advanced technologies, providing an exceptional user experience and is an excellent demonstration of the tremendous added value that Maporama's know-how brings to customers."

Maporama also delivers its content to WAP phones, PDAs, and SMS (short message service) mobile phones. On PDAs such as Palm, Psion and Pock PC, travelers download the Accorhotels directory based on a destination. In addition to Accor, Maporama also provides similar services for Sofitel, Novotel, Mercure, Suitehotel, Coralia Club, Ibis hotels, Etap Hotel and Formule 1.

SMS is a service for mobile phones that sends written messages containing a maximum of 160 characters. SMS uses the current GSM network. Maporama promotes SMS on its Web site, encouraging travelers to enter their mobile phone number in an online sign-up form, to then "receive free of charge a message with the number of your reservation confirmation and the hotel address and phone number."

This month, Maporama also announced street-level map services for Mexico City and South Africa. For Mexico City, the detailed digital maps were pepared inn collaboration with Geoscape International. In South Africa, Maporama worked in collaboration with Knowledge Factory, the customer services company in the JSE Securities Exchange-listed Primedia group.

Mexico City maps

"With the availability of street level maps of Mexico City, one of the largest megalopolis in the world, Maporama reinforces again its worldwide leadership in terms of geographic coverage," Vermot-Gauchy said. "Latin America and Mexico in particular, is one of the most important markets for north-American companies. Maporama is the only global and independent provider of location-centric applications to offer detailed coverage for this region and will extend it to the entire Latin America region in the next few weeks."

Location-centric applications enable organizations to turn their location data into profit, accelerating consumers' purchase decision cycle by helping them find specific products at specific stores while sharing store-specific information internally with employees and externally with suppliers.

Maporama's product offer includes advanced mapping and routing turnkey products as well as a powerful and complete API library for developers. Maporama claims to be the only location-centric solutions provider to localize an address of over a billion of consumers around the world offering, in addition to industry standard European and North American coverage, detailed street maps of Eastern Europe, Australia, South America.

From its inception in 2000, Maporama has been recognized for its innovations. In 2000, Maporama was first to announce pre-packaged solutions per industry sector. In 2001, the company was also first to announce location-based advertising products.

Today, the company is building an approach to enterprise-wide location-centric applications, compliant with any existing communication platform (Web, Wireless, PDAs, set-top-boxes) as well as with any existing cellular or landline telephone device through speech technology.

Maporama has 500 customers in over 15 countries including Yahoo!, Aventis, Europcar, Dr Martens, Estée Lauder, Thomson Multimedia, UBS Warburg, Diageo.

With 145,000 employees in 140 countries, Accor is a European leader and one of the world's largest groups in travel, tourism and corporate services, with two major international activities:

▪ Hotels: 3,700 hotels (410,000 rooms) in 90 countries, casinos, travel agencies, and restaurants.
▪ Services to corporate clients and public institutions: each day, 12 million people in 31 countries use a broad range of services (food vouchers, people care and services, incentive, loyalty programs, events) engineered and managed by Accor.