GEKKO's Innovative Technology - Bridging the Gap Between Digital Content and e-Commerce

BERLIN, March 11, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Gekko's Publisher Technology Added to traveldk.com

A pioneering collaboration between GEKKO http://www.gekko.com the online personal shopping assistant for hotels, and leading travel publisher DK Eyewitness Travel http://www.traveldk.com, has been unveiled at ITB Berlin today.

From today, the hotel content of traveldk.com, the award-winning website from DK Eyewitness Travel, will include GEKKO Links - a patent-pending, innovative technology which provides users with in-depth hotel information including imagery, maps, reviews, latest availability and price comparison, thus facilitating their booking process and helping them make informed hotel booking decisions. By simply adding a few lines of code, GEKKO Links will identify hotel names and references on traveldk.com and bring relevant information to the user at the time and place they need it.

traveldk.com features content from DK's best-selling Top 10 guidebook series and has won numerous awards for its innovative 'create your own guide' capability. In a strategic move to enhance its users' experience, it has applied GEKKO Links and GEKKO's hotel search engine to the functionality of its site.

Now when reviewing and researching destinations and hotels, visitors to traveldk.com can simply hover over a hotel name to look at photo's of the hotel, view best prices, check availability and even book the hotel directly, all without ever having to leave the publisher's site.

Michel Cassius, CEO of Gekko.com explains: "We created our products and technology to improve the discovery and booking experience for users wherever they are. At a time when publishers look at new sources of revenue we bring a layer of e-commerce to their editorial, increasing the value of their original content.

"When we approached the DK Eyewitness Travel team with the GEKKO Links concept there was a mutual excitement for the potential this partnership could reach and what the end result would look like for the user. We are pleased to be launching this partnership today, at one of the travel industry's most esteemed trade events, and we look forward to seeing how the functionality is received by traveldk.com customers."

Liz Statham, Head of Marketing at DK Eyewitness Travel commented: "We are really excited to be the first travel publisher to incorporate Gekko's innovative hotel recommendation tools into our website. The pop-up functionality makes searching for and booking accommodation on traveldk.com a really easy, intuitive experience, and fits perfectly with our brand USP of 'showing you what others only tell you'."

About GEKKO(TM)

Gekko http://www.gekko.com, the personal shopping assistant for hotels, has streamlined the typically cumbersome and lengthy process of finding and booking the right hotel for any situation by recommending ideal hotel matches based on an individual's preferences.  Gekko's proprietary algorithm and recommendation engine help the user significantly reduce the research time by delivering a consistently relevant and personalised selection of hotels. The company was shortlisted this year for Innovate!100, an exclusive list of the world's most promising startups.

With more than 200,000 hotels in its porfolio, Gekko also offers consumers one of the largest selections for online booking. Gekko partners with many of the leading hotel booking engines - Expedia, Booking,com, Late Rooms, etc - and can compare prices from all of these hotel providers. The number of hotels in Gekko's portfolio will increase as it signs up more partners. Gekko also integrates reviews from TripAdvisor.  

Gekko also recently launched GEKKO(TM) Links (http://www.gekko.com/gekkolinks/signup), the first service that creates affiliate links automatically for publishers that mention hotels on their sites, thereby generating additional revenue from their content. Gekko Links allows users to find out more information on a hotel, check availability, compare prices, as well as letting them book directly, without ever having to leave the publisher's site. BusinessTraveller.com was one of the first publishers to sign up to use the service.

About DK Eyewitness Travel

The world's bestselling travel guide publisher and leading content provider, DK Eyewitness Travel publishes inspirational and authoritative travel content across multiple platforms. From much-loved books to ground-breaking apps and a multi award-winning website - traveldk.com, DK Eyewitness Travel delivers the information travellers need in whatever format they want it. Known for being the guides that 'show you what others only tell you' DK Eyewitness Travel Guides have more lavish illustrations and photographs than any other guidebook, as well as unique 3D maps, visual guided walks and revealing star-sight cross-sections. DK also publish Top 10s - the world's No. 1 short-breaks guides, Back Roads - a driving holiday series, sumptuous gift books including the bestselling Travel: Where to Go When, and pocket maps and language guides, as well as providing world-class travel information for bespoke customer publishing, websites and mobile applications. Love your holiday, love DK.

DK Eyewitness Travel is part of the Penguin Group owned by Pearson PLC which has offices all over the world.