World’s Largest Hotel Company Has Chosen the MapQuest® Advantage API™ Development Environment to Provide Online Mapping Capabilities Across Multiple Brands Including Holiday Inn and Crowne Plaza
Dulles, VA, — December 15, 2004 –MapQuest, a leading provider of software and platforms that empower organizations to “location enable” their web and wireless applications, today announced InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) has selected the MapQuest® Advantage API™ development environment to deploy online mapping, routing and location search capabilities for its portfolio of world class hotel brands. InterContinental Hotels Group is the world’s most global hotel company and the largest by number of rooms. Its brands, including InterContinental®, Crowne Plaza®, Hotel Indigo™, Holiday Inn®, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites® and Candlewood Suites, boast approximately 536,000 guest rooms in more than 3,500 hotels across nearly 100 countries and territories around the world.
“Given the global nature of our business and the fact that we serve some of the best known and respected hotel brands in the world, it was essential that we choose a vendor who could provide broad mapping coverage while still giving us the flexibility to customize locator applications for multiple branded websites,” said Del Ross, Director, Global eCommerce Services.
“MapQuest offers an impressive degree of coverage and flexibility and backs it with the experience and reputation of one of the Internet’s most established companies. This is something that very few vendors can match and it gave us the confidence to roll out the solution on a project of this scale,” added Ross.
The Advantage API development environment provides maximum flexibility to build customized location enabled applications in a variety of leading development languages. A full API provides access to the complete Advantage™ feature set including high quality interactive maps, optimized and multi-point routing, multiple search paradigms and geocoding, allowing developers to easily incorporate advanced location enabled functionality into web and wireless applications deployed across their businesses.
By deploying the Advantage API development environment, InterContinental is able to leverage some of the most complete mapping coverage in the industry. Visitors to any one of the company’s branded websites, whether they are looking for a Holiday Inn near Boston or an InterContinental hotel in Buenos Aires, will have access to MapQuest’s extensive geographic data set, which includes street-level coverage for nearly two dozen countries in North America, Europe and Latin America as well as hundreds of major metropolitan areas around the world.
“We’re pleased to have InterContinental Hotels Group join the significant number of travel and hospitality companies that depend on MapQuest to help drive business to their properties around the globe,” said Walt Doyle, Vice President and General Manager of MapQuest Services.
“The addition of an industry leader like IHG is an indication of the incredible value that MapQuest brings to companies that operate on a global scale. The Advantage API development environment gives them the flexibility to roll out innovative location based applications and continue to improve their customer experience across their family of brands,” added Doyle.
MapQuest Services is a leading provider of software and platforms that empower organizations to location-enable web and wireless applications. Its products and services drive business to more than 1,400 global enterprise customers across key verticals including retail, healthcare, financial services, real estate, travel and hospitality. For more information about MapQuest Services and the Advantage™ products, please visit www.mapquestservices.com.
About MapQuest
MapQuest, based in Denver, CO and Mountville, PA, is a leading location services company and offers Web, Mobile, Business Solutions, and Print products in North America and Internationally. The online Web site, MapQuest.com, served almost 35 million consumers in October 2005, is currently ranked within the top 10 most powerful U.S. consumer brands on the Internet by NetRatings, and is the number one mapping site and number one directories site according to comScore Networks. MapQuest also empowers more than 1,400 businesses across key verticals including retail, healthcare, financial services, real estate, travel and hospitality with software solutions to location-enable Web, wireless and speech applications. In addition, MapQuest is a leading provider of custom-mapping content and map-product development for publishers and corporations, producing more than 1.5 billion pages of printed maps every year. MapQuest is a wholly owned subsidiary of America Online, Inc.
About America Online, Inc.
America Online, Inc. is a wholly owned subsidiary of Time Warner Inc. Based in Dulles, Virginia. AOL is the world’s leader in interactive services, web brands, Internet technologies and e-commerce services.
About InterContinental Hotels Group
InterContinental Hotels Group PLC of the United Kingdom [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)], the world’s most global hotel company and the largest by number of rooms, owns, manages, leases or franchises, through various subsidiaries, more than 3,500 hotels and 536,000 guest rooms in nearly 100 countries and territories around the world. The Group owns a portfolio of well recognized and respected hotel brands including InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites®, Candlewood Suites® and Hotel IndigoTM, and also manages the world’s largest hotel loyalty program, Priority Club® Rewards, with more than 23 million members worldwide.
InterContinental Hotels Group offers information and online reservations for all its hotel brands at www.ichotelsgroup.com and information for the Priority Club Rewards program at www.priorityclub.com.
