NORWALK, Conn. - (Business Wire) After one week of availability, priceline.com’s (Nasdaq: PCLN) Hotel Negotiator App has climbed to the #3 free travel app on the App Store. The new priceline.com app, which features The Priceline Negotiator (William Shatner), lets travelers use iPhone or iPod touch to quickly find and book last-minute hotel rooms using priceline.com’s Name Your Own Price® hotel service and save up to 50% over published hotel rates. Priceline.com also announced today that it has produced a free demo video of the app featuring William Shatner. The downloadable video can be viewed at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yhn5N7xcFOw.
The Hotel Negotiator App is available for free from the App Store on iPhone and iPod touch or at www.itunes.com/appstore/. For more information and high-resolution images of the Hotel Negotiator App, visit http://www.priceline.com/iphone/media.
Here’s what the media and travelers are saying about The Hotel Negotiator App:
“This app finally makes it practical to get that last-minute hotel room when you’re out and about” – 10/29, Black Book (which also named The Hotel Negotiator as its #1 travel app.
“This app finally makes it practical to bid on a room at the 11th-hour through Priceline’s famous blind-booking system” – 10/28, Budget Travel.
“For the first time, lets Name Your Own Price users bid for and book hotel rooms on the fly” – 10/27, USA Today.
“The Negotiator app is a different experience tailored for the iPhone and a fun one at that” – 10/27, Hudson Crossing.
“Amazing app! Best travel app out there” - 10/29, ShatnerWannabe.
“I love this app! Very easy to use and delivers great savings” - 10/ 27, Trav77777.
“I’m a frequent business traveler and I’m impressed. This is the best way to find deals with your iPhone. This is the first 5-star rating I’ve given an app and I’ve been an iPhonephyte since mid-2008 trying hundreds of apps” - 10/30, akp221.
Priceline.com’s Hotel Negotiator App includes the following unique features:
- The Priceline Negotiator. Activate the Hotel Negotiator App and The Priceline Negotiator (William Shatner) gets the whole phone vibrating as he punches his way through the screen.
- Winning Bids. Choose a city and the Hotel Negotiator App displays multiple recent winning bids made by other priceline.com customers for hotels in different parts of the city at different star levels.
- Shake-Down geo-locator-triggered hotel search. Shaking the device establishes the traveler’s location using location-based features and then performs a Winning Bids search for hotels in the surrounding areas.
- One-Page checkout. A specially designed one-page checkout screen speeds users through the bidding process.
- Instant Bid Results. Users will know instantly whether their bid is accepted. If it is, they’ll receive all the details on their hotel and its location.
- Native iPhone navigation. Users will instantly recognize the slides and wheels that help them navigate through the Hotel Negotiator shopping and booking experience.
- Not in the mood to negotiate? The Hotel Negotiator App also contains an option for browsing priceline.com’s broad assortment of published-price hotels for a particular city or town. Browsing can be initiated by choosing a city or by shaking the device which will bring up a selection of hotels within that specific area.
Hotel listings can be sorted by star level, price, proximity and popularity. Hotel listings include address, star level, customer reviews and satisfaction scores, zoomable maps, pictures and descriptions. All of the hotels on the list can be booked either online or by automatically calling priceline.com’s hotel booking specialists. Travelers who need help with other trip arrangements can select another option on the Hotel Negotiator app that takes them to a priceline.com website configured for iPhone and iPod touch. There, they can check flight status and browse and book airline tickets and rental cars on a published-price or Name Your Own Price® basis.
About Priceline.com® Incorporated
Priceline.com Incorporated (Nasdaq: PCLN) www.priceline.com provides online travel services in 29 languages in over 78 countries in Europe, North America, Asia, the Middle East and Africa. Included in the priceline.com family of companies is Booking.com, a leading international online hotel reservation service, priceline.com, a leading U.S. online travel service for value-conscious leisure travelers, and Agoda.com, an Asian online hotel reservation service. Priceline.com believes that Booking.com is Europe’s largest and fastest growing hotel reservation service, with a network of affiliated Web sites. Booking.com operates in over 70 countries in 24 languages and offers its customers access to over 71,000 participating hotels worldwide.
In the U.S., priceline.com gives customers more ways to save on their airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, vacation packages and cruises than any other Internet travel service. In addition to getting great published prices, leisure travelers can narrow their searches using priceline.com’s TripFilter advanced search technology, customize their search activity through priceline.com’s Inside Track features, create packages to save even more money, and take advantage of priceline.com’s famous Name Your Own Price® service, which can deliver the lowest prices available. Priceline.com also operates the following travel websites: Travelweb.com, Lowestfare.com, RentalCars.com and BreezeNet.com. Priceline.com also licenses its business model to certain independent and international licensees.
Priceline.com Incorporated
For Press Information:
Brian Ek, 203-299-8167
brian.ek@priceline.com
or
For Investor Relations:
Matthew Tynan, 203-299-8487
matt.tynan@priceline.com
