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Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts launches new mobile website

presse@wbrnet.info — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 09:19:31 PDT

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts announces a new website optimised for mobile phone users to access www.moevenpick-hotels.com

The new product is precisely tailored to the needs of mobile phone users and perfectly reflects the upscale image of the international hotel group with Swiss roots. User friendliness, dynamic updates, information content, clarity of presentation and design and access speed were the most important criteria in the construction of the mobile site.

The website, developed and provided by Usablenet Inc. in New York, NY, dynamically outputs the mobile site based on the capabilities of the respective mobile phone accessing the website www.moevenpick-hotels.com. The tool supports over 5000 different mobile-phone models worldwide.

The website is optimised for the screen size of each specific mobile phone model. The most important elements of information for each of the group's 65 hotels and resorts have been edited for easy reading on the respective phone's screen. Access to the booking engine is offered with real-time availability and reservation capability. Users also enjoy a selection of photos of each of the hotel's facilities and services. Customers will be able to reserve, modify or cancel a room in any Mövenpick hotel or resort, world wide from a web-enabled mobile phone. All information is available in both English and German.

Heiko Siebert, Vice-President Distribution for Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts commented: "With the success of our website it was a consequent next step to optimize it also for mobile phones and smartphones. As the use of the Internet through mobile devices will continue to increase, we had two main goals for this project, namely, an additional service for our guests seeking information about our hotels while on the road, and offering a new marketing/booking platform."

Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, an upscale hotel management company with over 12,000 employees, is represented through over 90 hotels existing or under construction in 26 countries with a concentration on its core markets in Europe, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. The international hotel group with roots in Switzerland is expanding and has a stated objective of increasing its hotel portfolio to 100 by the year 2010. With two hotel types, business and conference hotels, as well as holiday resorts, Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts has clearly positioned itself in the upscale segment and stands for quality, reliability and care with a personal touch. The hotel group is owned by Mövenpick Holding (66.7%) and the Kingdom Group (33.3%).

Visit the Mövenpick Media Lounge for further news here.

Source: http://www.travel4press.co.uk/

Media Futurist Gerd Leonhard to Open at the 2009 ACTE Global Education Conference in Prague

presse@wbrnet.info — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 10:17:59 PDT

(Alexandria, VA) The Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) is pleased to announce renowned media and communications futurist Gerd Leonhard as the opening keynote speaker at the 2009 ACTE Global Education Conference in Prague (25-27 October 2009).

Gerd Leonhard is an expert on Web 2.0, social networking and social media, media convergence, mobile technologies and next-generation business models. The Wall Street Journal calls Gerd 'one of the leading media futurists in the world'. The ACTE audience in Prague will join other audiences from around the world who will be able to use his ideas to transfrom their business practices.

Watch Leonhard in action here, and join us in Prague for his keynote presentation. The Mobility Revolution & the Power of Social Media: A view from around the world Mobile devices are taking over at blinding pace, and the implications are vast. How and when will the global shift to mobile impact the business travel industry?

At the same time, social media is exploding, and the noise is deafening. How can corporate travel managers harness the true power and potential of social media for their travel management programmes?

Given the current environment and the pace of innovation, companies are expected to find new ways to engage customers, colleagues, and communities. Gerd Leonhard will show you the way during his highly anticipated keynote presentation.

For more information, contact:
Jack Riepe, Communications Director
Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE)

Source: http://www.travel4press.co.uk/

Stop, collaborate and listen: mobile is social

presse@wbrnet.info — Thu, 18 Jun 2009 09:49:51 PDT

Everyone loves social media and understandably it is attracting a lot of attention as a new way to understand customers, engage with them in new and powerful ways and position travel brands as ‘cool’ ‘in-touch’ with their socially voracious customers. Mobile too is creating a lot of buzz but how can mobile and social media work together to create something truly special in the travel industry….?

In the new report just released by EyeforTravel Research the Author of the report explains that social media and viral marketing concepts underpin a lot of the potential for mobile to make a difference in mobile businesses and that understanding how these things work in the travel space will ensure that travel companies are developing mobile initiatives in tune with the way that their customers use their mobile devices.

The Author, Andrew Merrie notes that; “More traditionally, social media has relied on people having access to a PC or laptop in order to engage socially, not anymore. Even many lower end handsets now available on the market offer the ability to access facebook, Myspace, Twitter and all manner of social networks and social media tools either via an application, a widget or directly via the mobile web. This is a game changer as mobile devices have always been about personalisation and sociability and the extension of existing social media channels to mobile is perhaps quite natural”.

Clearly travellers are particularly well suited to accessing social media via their devices as they want to be able to share their experiences as they happen and mobile allows them to do exactly that. Graeme Kingshott from Interfaz shares some different ways that customers may use mobile and social media in a seamless and integrated fashion:
“Want to contribute details on the best hotel, beach, restaurant? Then send in your recommendation by SMS and we’ll post them on a mobile site for others to read in real time, long before the next guide book is printed.”

“Want to share your great times as they happen? Take a shot with your phone and then upload to a site direct from your mobile. Our technology can take them viral and share them with your friends.

Bored commuting and want ideas for the weekend? Then log on to a mobile website and see what’s hot that week complete with recommendations from others in real-time. Follow a simple click-to-call link and you can book your getaway.”

To read more about making mobile marketing work for the travel and tourism industry, along with case studies from 16 leading travel and tourism companies from around the world and huge amounts of useful information and practical aggregated insight from leaders in the mobile space, you can register free today as an EyeforTravel Research Advanced Member.

EyeforTravel Research Advanced Membership is a free resource for the travel industry and you can sign up here http://www.eyefortravelresearch.com/user/registration to gain immediate access to Advanced Member reports.

Source: http://www.travel4press.co.uk/

41 percent of Brits miss own bed on holiday

presse@wbrnet.info — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 07:57:38 PDT

The consumer site for travel information, www.trivago.co.uk asked its visitors in their latest survey what they miss most on their holidays. The majority of Brits miss something from home when travelling abroad.

On holiday Brits yearn for things that can only be found in their home country and look forward to returning home. This is the conclusion of the latest trivago survey which was answered by 5,352 users in May 2009.

41 percent of the Brits stated that they long for their own bed when they are on holiday. 13 percent miss the fact that not everyone speaks English abroad. Six percent of respondents miss their favourite television shows whilst they are away. Only four percent of British travellers miss British pubs and three percent miss British food.

Also in other European countries, the majority of travellers yearn for something from home when travelling abroad. Just as the Brits, the French and the German also miss their own bed (33 and 24 percent respectively). 34 percent of the Italians long for food from home when abroad, 27 percent miss their bidet. The Dutch were the least homesick when away from home; 38 percent of respondents stated that they do not miss anything when on holiday. The Italians were the most homesick, only 14 percent of travellers stated that they do not miss anything when abroad.

The online survey ‘What do you miss most when you travel abroad?’ was answered by 5,352 visitors to trivago from the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Spain and The Netherlands throughout May 2009.

A graph with all of the results can be found here:
http://imgpe.trivago.com/contentimages/press/images/miss_on_holiday_en.png

Freedom to publish in reference to www.trivago.co.uk

About trivago:
Travellers find the ideal hotel for the best rate on trivago. The online service compares the hotel rates of over 40 booking sites for 400,000 hotels worldwide. Additionally trivago has integrated over 15 million hotel reviews and shows the overall rating for each hotel. trivago does not just compare the prices of online hotel booking sites, but also the rates. Users can see whether breakfast is included and if cancellation and payment by credit card is possible. trivago has the first “Freestyle” meta search: travellers are able to search by holiday region, city or hotel name. trivago with its headquarters in Dusseldorf, Germany was founded in 2005 and currently operates 15 international country platforms.

Using a Mobile Site Builder for Web 2.0 Marketing

presse@wbrnet.info — Mon, 11 May 2009 07:59:27 PDT

Far more than a billion consumers worldwide browse the Web using mobiles and PDA. Hence, the demand for mobile websites is dramatically increasing. In many cases it is highly advisible to provide mobile users with dedicated mobile content rather than just transcoding the corporate website.

However, this may result in too much a standalone solution: the mobile website content has to be managed separately and is only loosely linked to the main homepage. This, in a sense, is not in line with modern web media - web 2.0 - where content should be shared across various media channels and aggregated to make the most of the variety of the social web.

Considering two internet worlds, a PC and a mobile web, would not be an approporiate view of todays internet. Instead, the traditional homepage and a new mobile homepage form just two of many profiles a company or an individual may own, such as LinkedIn, Facebook, MySpace, twitter, XING and others, let alone the world of weblogs.

Mobihexer, a German based mobile website builder, provides some features towards modern media integration and aggregation of existing profiles. For better integration of DotMobi and PC optimized display, the Google Transcoder is "built in": each page may link to a non mobile URL which is transcoded to mobile format on the fly. In this way, a mobile version of a website can smoothly be integrated with a larger homepage.

Example: suppose, a price table is to be updated frequently. Instead of updating both the PC and the mobile website, it suffices to design the PC website price page "semi-dotmobi" - and Mobihexers corresponding page will just link to the price section then which feels like a part of the mobile site itself.

Another feature of Mobihexer is its aggregation page: site owners may list and comment their web 2.0 media profiles. Up to 30 links can be listed - including a 200 char. description - and grouped - with media such as del.icio.us, twitter, FriendFeed, XING and categories like homepage, "more information", press release, recommendation.

Examples:
Mobile format: http://www.mobihexer.de/neue-mobile-homepages/index.cfm?site=pressenet
PC browser format: http://www.mobiprofi.de/pc/pressenet.html
OnePageView: http://www.mobihexer.de/onepageview/pressenet.html
The Profile Page: http://www.mobihexer.de/profil/pressenet.html

Profile pages of Mobihexer lets the user easily keep track of the ever growing number of social media profiles she may own. Additionally, the profile page increases the mobile websites search engine rank.

Using Mobihexer is free and an English version is availabe.
Sign up FREE here http://www.mobihexer.de

More information: http://www.mobihexer.de/onepageview/cutesite.html

Publisher: http://www.pressenet.info

Build Your Own Mobile Website in Minutes!

presse@wbrnet.info — Fri, 08 May 2009 06:03:03 PDT

There are almost as many mobile site building tools as there are for PC browser formatted websites. Plus, the latter claim, at least in more recent versions, that their code output is mobile friendly and the entire website will be properly displayed on any mobile phone.

However, user friendliness is not just an HTML issue. Mobile users require website information that is "snackable" on the go: less content per page, less sections, only the most essential images on each page, simple navigation with much less options than there are on a menu designed for PC browser view.

If these basic requirements are not met, attention of mobile users may be lost in seconds. Needless to say, those who use a mobile device to surf the Web have less time and are less patient than desktop PC users.

Consequently, the most effective way to address the mobile audience is designing a dedicated mobile website with a specific and more concise content. This may mean additional effort at the beginning, but it more than pays: additional to better visibility and stickiness of the website, a dedicated mobile site may increase visibility on the non-mobile Web plus increase the rank of the site owners non-mobile homepage.

With Mobihexer, a German site builder for mobile websites, these advantages are available within a few minutes. Additional to mobile pages, PC browser adapted pages are generated on the fly, plus there is a "OnePageView" listing all web pages of the site on a single web page. This makes it easy to organize pages plus, more importantly, it makes the site more visible in search engines. If an user happens to look up a PC browser version of the mobile site using her PDA or mobile, page content will automatically be displayed in the mobile version.

On the other hand, if the mobile format is displayed, all outgoing links - in particular the back link to the site owners non-mobile homepage - will be transcoded to mobi-ready format using the Google Transcoder. In this way, even though the transcoded page may not be very pretty to look at, the mobile user is at least granted access to the original homepage and he will not loose control during navigation (as often happens with non-mobile sites used from a mobile).

Site owners building a mobile site with Mobihexer may, just by linking back to their PC homepage or related pages, increase search engine ranking of their non mobile sites and thus use their mobile site as an effective contribution to their search engine optimization efforts.

Using Mobihexer is free and an English version is availabe.
Sign up FREE here www.mobihexer.de

More information: www.mobihexer.de/onepageview/cutesite.html

Publisher: www.pressenet.info

Free Mobile Website Creator xsmobi.com Helps Publishers Reach MORE Millions of Mobile Internet Consumers

presse@wbrnet.info — Mon, 23 Feb 2009 10:46:41 PST

The mobile Web provides the opportunity to uniquely interact with people away from their PC web browser. More than 1.3 billion worldwide use mobiles and PDA to access the web and demand for browsing the Web on the go is dramatically increasing.

The US, China and Germany head the table of mobile internet usage across countries. China is number two in terms of ".mobi" domain registrants and China's mobile Internet penetration is on par with Germany's.

Many publishers, however, are not aware that users are easily turned off by poor display and navigation options of web pages on mobiles. There are tens of thousands of different mobile devices out there - and only a few percent of consumers are using an iPhone able to display almost all kinds of sites.

For the vast majority of mobile consumers usability and satisfaction depend very much on mobile-ready content. Moreover, mobile users want "snackable" content: small bites of content, served up quickly and easily.

www.xsmobi.com makes it easy for publishers to meet these needs: mobile websites can be created in minutes. The German website building tool is intended for non-technical users: no software to download or install, websites can be built intuitively with no HTML knowledge at all.

All pages created are automatically mobile-ready (with a rating of better than 4 of 5 at ready.mobi). Plus, a PC web browser version of the site is generated on the fly as well as a "OnePageView" of the mobile site on a single web page. Users may switch between views while browsing the mobile site.

The basic version of www.xsmobi.com including 20 pages is free and registration only requires the user's email address.

Source: www.xsmobi.com

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How an effective information technology solutions provider should work

presse@wbrnet.info — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:55:32 PDT

As the Internet keeps expanding, companies are not satisfied with mere web presence. Discerning companies today want their websites to reflect their corporate philosophy. An information technology solutions provider builds and maintains a company's digital brand image by developing unique, customer centric web development solutions that augment their corporate image.

They cater to all your business needs - from creating a simple static site to complex database driven interactive websites. What separates them from the rest is the strength of the creative team, which is a harmonic blend of innovation and experience. The end result is visually stunning websites that are functionally efficient.

In the ever-changing myriad world that is the Internet, it is no longer sufficient to have a website that looks merely good and is functional. The end objective of a website is to enhance brand awareness and increase the sales. As the web keeps on expanding, it is becoming increasingly evident that companies need to explore all the avenues that will make their website more accessible.
Search engines play a vital part in promoting business by driving more customers to a site. Surfers today rely on search engines to find context sensitive information.

An effective working IT solutions provider has to take cognizance of this trend. He has a dedicated team of SEO professionals who use proven design methodologies that drive targeted traffic to your site, thereby opening more avenues of revenue generation.
He has developed an array of software products that avails maximum advantage of the benefits the Net has to offer. This range of products empowers a company to be cost effective. The products are highly scalable, and can integrate with an existing legacy system.

Web based software applications makes project management trouble free and straightforward, simplifies the process of lead tracking and generation for call centers, develops a transparency within the team members which in turn speeds up the complete process, and are useful for webmasters who are responsible for handling many websites at a time.
Essentially, this software applications automates many manual processes and also provides help from its constantly upgraded knowledge base.

Evaluation Phase

The evaluation phase gives a clear and concise understanding right up front of the capabilities, scope, requirements, costs and schedule for a system that meets current business objectives, while building a foundation that allows you flexibility and scalability for future needs. Recommended is an appropriate course of action to deliver the new or re-engineered system.

This phase includes functional requirements, high-level system architecture diagram, and a project plan, as well as technical and related business risks that the existing system may pose to future operations.

Analysis Phase

Combined with applicable evaluation phase findings the analysis phase lays the foundation that turns your business vision into operational reality. The analysis phase produces detailed requirements and system architecture specifications to ensure smooth, predictable project execution.

Key Analysis phase deliverables are:
- Requirement Specification - a detailed description of functional needs, as well as non-functional requirements, including performance, reliability and security requirements.
- High Level Object Model - highlighting key business objects and their relationships.
- High Level Project Plan - with preliminary schedule, tasks, resource requirements and organization chart.
- Technical and Software Architecture Specifications - including software partitioning, other products, protocols and deployment options.
- Architecture and GUI Prototypes - to insure that the end product is not only functionally efficient, but user friendly.

Development Phase

Milestones are assigned for each grouping of business functions, and for implementation and testing. Generally, each milestone is completed within four to six weeks, depending on the number of business functions in the milestone and the complexity of the functionality described.

The development work for each milestone includes:
- Design Documentation - with sequence diagrams and a greater level of detail provided to the Object Model.
- Source Code Written - to implement each business function in the system.
- Testing - beginning with unit testing, followed by incremental integration testing and regression testing.
- Functional System Demo - as each milestone completes, a demonstration of the functionality becomes available for review.

Testing Phase

This final phase of the development process actually starts during the analysis phase when the project team evaluates and selects the best testing tools for your company's system test.

A three-step testing process begins with:
- System Test and User Acceptance Planning - which details processes for conducting the system test, defines how and when performance and stress testing will be conducted, details reporting and tracking of software defects and outlines test team member roles.
- User Acceptance Test/Pilot - the last step in the testing phase includes final testing of the software and release to a subset of the user community. The pilot process develops a core group of users to debug the system in its actual production environment and to help accelerate training when made available to a broader user community.

Web: http://www.graphinetmedia.com

Mail: contact@graphinetmedia.com

Service oriented architecture

presse@wbrnet.info — Thu, 29 May 2008 14:57:09 PDT

Today's enterprises are marked by rapid change, and IT organizations are charged with responsiveness. So imagine if the numerous applications across your infrastructure were transformed into services - "building blocks" to respond to ever-changing business conditions. You could:
- Improve employee communication and collaboration.
- Reinforce connectivity.
- Reuse services, and eliminate duplication.

Bridge Gaps between Business and IT
- Take back control of data storage costs, unlock potential and reduce storage requirements.
- Respond quickly to emerging opportunities and competitive threats by rapidly deploying composite applications and automating departmental tasks.
- Find out where you are and where you want to go?!?

Service oriented architecture (SOA) delivers the flexibility for IT to meet dynamic business objectives it refines processes, streamlines communication and data transmission, and improves overall efficiency. SOA is people-centric collaboration. There are many ways to get into SOA, and this should be done incrementally.

Some organizations start with business initiatives that touch people throughout the organization:
- People-centric collaboration - improves collaboration among employees and trading partners;
- Business process management - improves business processes that are causing bottlenecks;
- Information cleansing - duplicate or contradictory information is scattered across the organization.
Take back control through this entry-point.

Others start with IT-driven projects that integrate business services and bring about new levels of flexibility to the organization - this is achieved by creating and reusing services, thereby saving time and money.

SOA is not something you implement once and walk away from. No matter where you get into SOA, you must continually make it better:
- SOA Management: Efficiently deploy, manage and secure SOA-based services and underlying composite applications.
- SOA Governance: Establish controls and drive ongoing improvements.

Ramp up Employee Collaboration - Increase Collaboration and Information Access - Simplify Process Changes!

Agility is key to any successful enterprise. Employees need to react quickly, communicate effectively and make business-critical decisions on the fly. By transforming your communication infrastructure into a building block for SOA, you can maximize employee collaboration and increase operational efficiencies.

People-centric collaboration delivers a centralized way for employees to interact with each other in the context of your business processes. SOA can help you with your needs - drive innovation and responsiveness, and minimize deployment time for new services.

We have so many channels for communication - e-mail, IM, the intranet, phones, and conferencing. But somehow none of them were ever effective at pulling folks together to reach our production goals!

SOA can streamline and simplify your processes, optimize workflow, increase responsiveness and innovation!

Companies today need the flexibility to deploy business processes quickly and monitor their effectiveness. SOA can help simplify the complexity of today's IT architectures, by helping streamline your business processes and making sure they can be quickly reshaped to suit the business requirement at hand.

Using tools, with SOA you can model business processes, remove bottlenecks and then make changes to deploy enhancements. You can even link multiple processes across the enterprise - and outside firewalls - to suppliers and partners.

Computer Consultants gets IT done - SOA can providing you with solutions that will help:
- Collaboration amongst employees and partners, thereby delivering Information in the right form, at right time, and to the right person/application!
- Streamline and optimize existing resources, thereby cutting costs, improving utilization and driving growth!

Web: http://www.computants.org