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

To: John Powell who wrote (113)	10/21/1999 11:54:00 PM
From: ring4	Respond to of 127

Date: October 21, 1999 Contact: Investor Relations 1-877-399-4499 e-mail: info@vipintcorp.com Corp. website: www.vipintcorp.com HARS Launches - CarsandHotels.com Calgary, Alberta, Canada - HARS Systems, Inc. through its wholly owned subsidiary, VIP International Corporation, announced the launch of its proprietary hotel and car rental website. On Thursday October 21st. the site went live under the URL CarsandHotels.com. and allows for the on-line interactive booking of VIP?s 3,200 plus hotel and car rental locations. Internet users now have immediate access to real time hotel rate, inventory, property descriptions and amenities information and will receive immediate confirmation of their booking requests. VIP plans to integrate the real-time car rental product by the end of November, and will provide the Internet user with an ability to book both car rental and hotels on-line. Until then, cars can be booked through the site via an e-mail link to the system. Unlike many of the e-commerce travel sites, VIP is not connecting to an airline global distribution system (GDS). Instead, VIP is by-passing the GDS and connecting the site directly to its booking engine, which eliminates a middleman and reduces distribution expenses. ?Previous to our own site, we have been electronically distributing our hotel and car rental product exclusively through the mega-travel sites such as, Microsoft?s Expedia (www.expedia.com), Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), Worldres (www.placestostay.com) and Leisure Planet (www.leisureplanet.com). Now our entrance into e-commerce is complete with the launching of CarsandHotels.com.,? said Kelly Blake, President of VIP. VIP will continue to distribute through the mega-travel sites and has secured an additional URL -HotelsandCars.com -to ensure greater search results. VIP contracted with Open World of Bath, U.K. in July of this year to develop and host the site. Open World 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. VIP and Open World are working to ensure links to major search engines such as Alta Vista and AOL.com and portal sites such as Yahoo and MSN.com. Overall VIP will monitor the display of its site in over 12 major search engines to ensure it is returned near or at the top of the search list. Today, VIP generates approximately 8% of its hotel and car rental bookings, or more than $12 million in hotel and car rental revenue annually, through the Internet. ?Our significant growth in Internet bookings to date has come without our proprietary site up and operational. We expect significant volumes from the Internet as a whole now that our site is on-line,? said, Anita Chan, Director of Marketing and Electronic Distribution. This proprietary site and the growth of the mega-travel sites is expected to increase VIP?s internet bookings to 12% 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. Today, VIP produces bookings worth in excess of $150 million in hotel and car rental revenue annually. VIP International Corporation (A wholly owned subsidiary of HARS Systems, Inc. VSE - HSS) Tel. (403) 269-3566 Fax. (403) 266-5228 e-mail kblake@vipintcorp.com website - www.vipintcorp.com Providing Internet & GDS Electronic Distribution and Marketing Services to more than 3,200 hotel and car rental companies worldwide.