Hotels.com is the global hotels specialist and operates over 50 websites globally. Hotels.com gives travelers one of the widest solutions of accommodation on the net including both independent and major chain hotels in over 100,000 properties worldwide. It is a one stop shopping source for hotel pricing, amenities and availability. Hotels.com LP is an affiliate of Expedia Inc., the world’s leading online travel company.

In January 2009, Hotels.com was launching their India website and tasked Pressman to handle the media release announcing the launch and subsequently heighten the awareness of Hotels.com through a series of media releases. The online travel space is a highly competitive one and the major challenge was to raise awareness of the Hotels.com brand in India

Given the virtual nature of the company, the strategy focused on media relations which targeted journalists from travel and trade, lifestyle as well as top-tier mainline media. The strategy involved weaving the Hotels.com brand around features relating to interesting hotels worldwide and research based stories.

A series of media releases covering global topics like surveys of hotel prices (Hotels Price Index) conducted by Hotels.com and interesting features on topics like, ‘Waking up with the stars’, ‘The world’s quirkiest hotels’, ‘Best hotels for women who want it all’ and ‘Hotels with the ‘est’ factor’, and distributed to both mainline and specialist lifestyle and trade media. Pressman targeted the right journalists in the media outlets establishing personal contacts with most of them.

The stories based on hotel features were supported by brilliant images of the various properties while the survey press releases were supported by graphic representation of hotel price movements globally and regionally.

For the nine month period Jan to Sept 2009, the campaign generated coverage in 89 print titles with a total of 19 million impressions and 83 online sites with total Daily Unique Visitors of 2.5 million including national titles like Mint, Deccan Herald, DNA, Times of India, Business Standard, New Indian Express, Indian Express, Hindu Business Line, India Today, Statesman, Midday, all travel and trade publications, important lifestyle media and top Indian news portals including rediff and sify.

The campaign has generated extensive publicity for Hotels.com which has been successfully promoted as a leading online hotel booking site.