Press Release

Telstra Warms to Travel Search Engine

Wilmington, Delaware, 30 June 2010 – Telstra today unveiled its NSW finalists for the prestigious Telstra 2010 business awards - to be judged on the 9th July 2010. The awards are split into five categories with a travel search engine - HotelsCombined.com.au - claiming a nominated position in the Panasonic Australia Medium Business category.

HotelsCombined.com.au welcomes the nomination declaring "it's simply fantastic to be recognised for the unique role we play in the travel industry. We strive to give the general public what they are looking for when they come to HotelsCombined.com.au – a simple, easy to use interface, allowing them to quickly find the best hotel deal - at no mark-up or hidden cost” — said Yury Glikin, Director of Business Development.

Late in 2005, a brainstorming session to create the ultimate hotel reservation website led three Sydney business partners to design HotelsCombined.com. Their innovative website aggregates room prices from online travel agents and hotel chains into a streamlined database of 230,000 properties from 195 countries via a single search engine. While other travel meta-search engines handle flight prices and availability, HotelsCombined.com.au sends user requests for hotel rooms to more than 30 other search engines and thousands of hotel websites to compile its listing. The 24-language site is a free service for customers to use. Today, some 6.5 million visitors a month use the site to compare hotel deals before clicking further to make a reservation.

Other NSW finalists include Australian Careers Business College - providing vocational education to high-school leavers, Doltone House Group - a venue and catering supplier, EzyPay - a direct debit solution provider, and two new media companies - TigerSpike and Viocorp International.

The Telstra Business Awards commenced in 1992 to help build awareness of successful Australian businesses within the broader community. At the same time, they helped many growing businesses to greater achievements and, in many cases, international success. Today, in its 18th year, it remains Australia’s pre-eminent business awards program.

Telstra provide a forum to enable followers of the awards programme to submit support for their favoured contestants at http://finalists.telstrabusinessawards.com/event.

About HotelsCombined.com

HotelsCombined.com searches multiple travel reservation sites to find hotel availability at the lowest price for our consumers – quickly and for free. We instantly aggregate and deliver 230,000 hotels around the world (195 countries), 1.5 million consumer reviews, 3 million hotel images and 2 million hotel descriptions and maps. We have partnered with all the key online travel brands and have access to all the main hotel inventory sources. We serve over 6 million consumers every month, in 21 languages and over 190 currencies. Our major client markets are: US, UK, Australia and Western Europe.

Media Contact

Vicki Byrne
Business Development
Phone: +61 2 8011 4192
Mobile: +61 403 561 344
Email: Vicki@HotelsCombined.com
Website: http://www.HotelsCombined.com

Request Data & Commentary

HotelsCombined.com spokespeople are available as a media resource for expert quotes and hotel industry trend watching. In addition, customized statistical reports about worldwide booking and rate trends can be prepared quickly upon request.