Trust International Supports Asia-Pacific Travel Boom

Area-Specific Products and Services

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. October 14, 2008

FRANKFURT, Germany, July 14, 2008. Trust International has experienced tremendous growth in the Asia Pacific (APAC) market over the past 12 months with numerous new hotel clients signed and APAC hotel bookings increasing more than 365% during the first half of 2008 compared to the first six months of 2007. During the same six month time span, total room revenue increased 400% and the average daily rate increased from USD $208 to USD $255 among Trust's APAC users of its Voyager|CRS (centralized reservation system) distribution services, who include numerous major hotel groups, such as Okura Hotels & Resorts, Oberoi Group, Banyan Tree Hotels and Resorts and New Otani. Trust International, the leading provider of reservation services and distribution technology for the hotel industry, is anticipating that bookings will continue on a similar upward trend over the next 3-5 years and beyond.

"The economy continues to be in a strong growth mode in the Asia Pacific region and that is increasing consumer wealth," said Anthony Ku, Regional VP Sales, Trust International. "In addition to the higher level of business travel activities, more consumers are now able to afford to travel, so we're seeing a tremendous up-tick in intra-Asia travel. Hotels are moving quickly to accommodate the surge in travelers and we have seen steady growth in requests for our travel distribution and call center support services among hotels and hotel groups in the region. We are delighted and excited to announce several new APAC clients within the coming weeks."

The travel distribution industry is definitely taking notice of the increased APAC travel activity as evidenced by the first HEDNA (Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association) Asia conference held July 10th that focused entirely on APAC travel growth trends and challenges. The event's importance to the industry was underscored by the fact that it was sponsored by major travel industry players and analysts including Trust International. Key themes emerging from the conference were the huge growth in travel distribution across the APAC markets, even in mature markets such as Australia, Hong Kong and Singapore and the fact that many of the markets have very unique aspects that have to be taken into consideration when developing strategies for servicing them.

This new hotbed of travel activity has its unique set of requirements both for the guests shopping for the best deals and for the hotels who are seeking to equip their staffs with the best tools to manage their distribution and to bridge to the markets within Asia as well as further abroad.

A key factor in Trust's success in APAC is its support via enhancements specific to each area's needs. For example, Trust is the first to offer a feature that allows the exact calculation of the Indian Tax system in all rate display screens. Trust also will soon offer a CRS graphical user interface (GUI) in Asian languages.

Trust's special attention extends beyond the hotels to the consumers themselves. In this highly complex market, where confidence in booking online is still an issue and broadband internet connectivity is not as widespread as in other regions of the world it is important to offer excellent voice services. Guests who want to arrange complicated multi-city travel itineraries are more comfortable with voice service and are pleased when a good and comprehensive website is complemented by excellent voice handling services. To answer those requests coming via phone and to help build consumer confidence in online bookings, Trust provides its Trust-owned and operated Asia-based call center services featuring native speakers in Mandarin, Cantonese, Japanese, Modern Arabic and English. Consumers are seamlessly connected with native speakers that act on behalf of Trust's hotel clients, covering calls from Singapore, Hong Kong, Taiwan, China, Australia, New Zealand, Malaysia, Thailand, Japan, India, UAE, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, South Korea and the Philippines.

"We understand that especially in Asia, guests appreciate being supported in their own native language to help ensure maximum accuracy and understanding of their important travel requests," stated Ben Brewster, Senior Director Global Communication Centers, Trust International. "We see continued demand for voice handling services and, concurrently, tremendous growth potential for online booking in Asia. We believe that by providing excellent voice services, we'll be able to walk them through questions they have and encourage them to book online, thereby facilitating growing consumer confidence in using our online booking channels."

Mr. Ku concluded, "Asia Pacific represents a whole new consumer group discovering the excitement of traveling to new destinations and we anticipate that the numbers of travelers and amount of travel will continue to increase significantly for the next three to five years. Those who will be the most successful in capturing this new business will be those who best serve the travelers' existing needs while fostering evolution of new technology as the market matures. We're working closely with our hotel customers to identify their needs and objectives. Our goal at Trust is to carefully address each client's needs so we deliver the best customer-specific products and services to enable hotels to cost-effectively deliver a smooth hotel booking experience."