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Gulliver Shortlisted for Three Awards in Esat BT Golden Spider Awards

Gulliver Ireland, Ireland's leading cost effective provider of tourism information and reservations, announced today (Wednesday, 10th September 2003) that it has been shortlisted for three awards in the forthcoming Esat BT Golden Spider Awards.

The company's portal, www.goireland.com, is the premier online shop window for Irish tourism businesses and the leading consumer site for tourist information and reservations. GoIreland.com has been shortlisted for both the Best Travel and Tourism Website Award and the Best International Award. In addition, gulliver.ie has been shortlisted for the Best Overall .ie Business Website Award.

GoIreland.com is Ireland's leading tourism information portal. Users travelling to and around Ireland are offered a wide choice of and the best value deals in accommodation, car hire, ferries, vacation packages and online shopping. The portal provides immediate, low cost and easy access to an extensive range of tourism products and services through an up-to-date, comprehensive database. Information provided includes accommodation, general destination information, calendar of events and sport and leisure facilities.

A key offering is the portal's accommodation reservation system that features online

availability for almost 9,000 properties throughout the island of Ireland. GoIreland.com provides high visibility online distribution to all accommodation types regardless of size, location or technical competence. Portal visitors are predicted to grow by 70 per cent to over 4.5 million in 2003. The portal's focus is the international market where US and UK users account for over 80 per cent of visitors.

gulliver.ie hosts the Gulliver database, Ireland's destination management system, which contains all approved accommodation providers on the island of Ireland. The system processes reservations for member properties, numbering almost 9,000, from the Internet, tourist offices and the international call centre. Gulliver's "Book Now" reservation link also allows accommodation providers to offer online reservations through their own web sites.

Properties allocate a number of priced rooms to the system. While this information was previously maintained over the phone, Gulliver has developed an online system called Gullnet that allows properties to update their availability, change prices, view customer details and view historic reports. 78 per cent of Gulliver's €20 million reservations business went to premises using Gullnet in 2002 and has increased to 84 per cent of reservations to date this year. Online Gulliver reservations have grown more than 100 per cent on last year.

Commenting on the announcement, Stewart Stephens, Gulliver Ireland's Managing Director, said, "We are delighted to have been shortlisted for three of the Esat BT Golden Spider Awards. These prestigious awards recognise and reward excellence in the Irish Internet industry and this underlines the efforts of GoIreland.com and gulliver.ie to promote Ireland as a tourism destination.

"We have made a significant investment in implementing best practice on both GoIreland.com and gulliver.ie and consistently offer new innovative products and services to our customers. Increasing international tourism competition dictates that only countries with state-of-the-art electronic systems for providing information and tourism product reservations will grow. Gulliver Ireland continues to meet this challenge through GoIreland.com and gulliver.ie," added Stewart Stephens.