Hotels.com Named 'Best Overall Customer Experience'

LONDON, May 25, 2011 /PRNewswire/ --

- Keynote Competitive Research Finds Hotels.com to be Most 'Convenient' and 'Friendly'

Hotels.com was named "Best Overall Customer Experience" according to a study by Keynote Competitive Research that examines nine of the top online travel websites in the U.S. The rankings were based on responses from 1,800 real users, who were observed as they accomplished tasks on each of the sites, as well as real data collected through Keynote website monitoring to assess the technical quality of each website. For this study, Keynote recognized companies with the overall top ranking, as well as those exhibiting excellence in specific categories.

As well as the highest award, Hotels.com gained other notable successes such as:

- winning first place in six other categories, including the key service areas of customer satisfaction, customer support and booking process

- achieving a total of 12 top three places overall

- improving its scores in 14 out of the 16 categories, compared to last year's results.

"We're proud to be honoured with the Keynote Competitive Research's distinction of best overall customer experience as it shows that our commitment to offering a great service to our users is recognised and appreciated," commented Scott Booker, Senior Vice President, eCommerce for Hotels.com. "Hotels.com is known throughout the industry for our site's ease of use, features which include over 2 million unique user-generated hotel reviews, our award winning Welcome Rewards loyalty programme, our 24/7 customer service, and our price guarantee."

Additional study findings also discovered that Hotels.com was considered most "convenient" and "friendly" and was also named most "flexible & accommodating to customer requests"

About Hotels.com

As part of the Expedia group which operates in all major markets, Hotels.com offers more than 135,000 quality hotels, B&Bs and serviced apartments worldwide. If a customer can find the same deal for less on a prepaid hotel, Hotels.com will match it. Hotels.com benefits from one of the largest hotel contracting teams in the industry negotiating the best rates for its customers, plus there are more than 2 million reviews from users who have actually stayed in the hotels to ensure customers make an informed choice when booking. Travellers can book online or by contacting one of the multilingual call centres.