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Gold/Mining/Energy : HSS Hars Systems - Internet Travel -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: David Michaud who wrote (69)	7/10/1999 2:58:00 PM
From: VisionsOfSugarplums	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 127

Doesn't look like this PR was posted here the past week: Hars in Web-site deal with Open World Hars Systems Inc HSS Shares issued 15,796,296 1999-07-02 close $0.65 Monday Jul 5 1999 Mr. Kelly Blake reports Hars Systems, through its wholly owned subsidiary VIP International Corporation, has signed an agreement with Open World Ltd. of Bath, England for the development of a proprietary Internet site that will place all of VIP's hotel and car rental clientele on-line and bookable under a to-be-announced domain name owned and controlled by VIP. The site will allow for the on-line interactive booking of VIP's 3,000-plus hotel and car rental locations. By September of 1999, VIP will launch a site which contains images and textual content for all of its 1,600 hotel properties. Internet users will have immediate access to real-time rate, inventory, property description and amenities information and will receive immediate confirmation of their booking requests. VIP plans to integrate the car rental product by the end of 1999, and will provide the Internet user with an ability to book both car rental and hotels on-line. "Until now, we have been electronically distributing our hotel and car rental product solely through travel sites such as Microsoft's Expedia (www.expedia.com), Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), Worldres (www.placestostay.com) and Leisure Planet (www.leisureplanet.com). Today, we have officially entered the e-commerce game directly by announcing the development of our own site," said Kelly Blake, president of VIP. This site is not meant to compete directly with the larger megatravel sites. Instead, VIP's proprietary site will be designed for those hotel guests and car rental clients that have developed brand loyalty to a particular VIP product and for those customers that wish to book direct as opposed to utilizing a search engine, portal site or more traditional channel. VIP chose Open World to develop and host its site due to their significant expertise in developing effective hospitality Web sites. "Open World has spent significant time and resources to understand the hospitality booking behaviour of Internet users. As a result, we believe they are the leaders in the development of travel Web sites that work," said Anita Chan, VIP's director of marketing and electronic distribution. Open World has developed and hosts Web sites for Hyatt Hotels & Resorts, Inter-Continental, Orient Express Hotels & Trains and SRS WORLDHOTELS and is highly regarded in the hospitality community. "We are extremely fortunate to bring VIP into our stable of hotel clients," said Jeff Thomas, vice-president, sales and marketing of Open World. "VIP's extensive portfolio of hotels and distribution experience will create a complete experience for Internet users around the world." Today, VIP generates approximately 6 per cent of its hotel and car rental bookings, or more than $9-million in hotel and car rental revenue annually, through the Internet. This proprietary site and the growth of the megatravel sites is expected to increase VIP's Internet bookings to 12 per cent of its total bookings, or approximately $14-million in hotel and car rental revenue by the year 2000. The company expects this number to reach $60-million in hospitality and car rental revenue by 2002. (c) Copyright 1999 Canjex Publishing Ltd. canada-stockwatch.com Regards, t.