Leonardo and ICE Expand Products

Leonardo/ICE Portal complete 'Phase One' Content Integration Partnership

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. October 14, 2008

LONDON, UK / MIAMI, FL, MAY 17, 2006. Leonardo, the leading provider of hotel image content and online channel solutions for travel industry, announced that Phase One of its Content Integration Partnership with Miami, Fla.-based ICE Portal is now complete.

Content integration with ICE will enable all Leonardo customers - now more than 90 hotel brands - to provide enhanced "animated" images and virtual tours/video to more than 20,000 leading travel websites, including the four GDSs (Global-Distribution Systems), through an ICE Portal digital brochure product.

"Our partnership with ICE Portal has been in development for some time, and the initial response from the industry has been 'very positive,'" said Leonardo CEO David Elton. "Together Leonardo and ICE Portal provide a win-win scenario for hotels, the GDSs and travel distribution sites. Any hotel that uses Leonardo to manage and distribute its static images and rich media content to the key GDSs and travel channels can now utilize our enhanced rich media channel product offered with the ICE Dynamic Brochure product. By simply linking to ICE, Leonardo's customers can expand their online marketing reach to provide additional travel distribution channels with enhanced moving content."

Current research indicates that moving images, such as animated images and virtual tours, generate 46 percent more bookings than still images on travel sites.

Henry Woodman, president of ICE Portal, explained that many distribution channels do not support moving content because no industry standard for receiving and displaying that content has been established. That's why Leonardo and ICE Portal have created a way to "bundle" static and moving images together into a generic digital brochure package.

"We have now completed our system interfaces," Woodman said. "Not only does this provide value to Leonardo customers, but it will add more channel opportunities for ICE customers as well who can benefit from the vast Leonardo distribution network."

Woodman explained that ICE's digital brochures with rich media, or moving content, can be included in Leonardo's delivery to its network of GDS and travel distribution channels. ICE Portal can custom brand the digital brochures for each channel and have the content delivered with ICE's SmartLink technology. SmartLinks verify the content exists prior to "showing" the link or image that launches the digital brochure.

Phase Two of the Leonardo / ICE Portal Content Integration Partnership is now under development. This phase will focus on increasing visibility for small to medium size hotel groups and independents who want a complete content management solution that also provides distribution of all their visuals to the distribution channels that need and want that content.

"Visual marketing is simple, effective and very inexpensive," Woodman said. "It's as if the Internet were designed specifically for selling travel."

Elton added: "The Internet is becoming the most influential consumer tool for making hotel and travel decisions, both corporate and leisure. The Leonardo/ICE Portal partnership takes the burden off the shoulders of hoteliers trying to manage and distribute their rich media content - albeit still pictures or moving images. It's synergy at its best."