LateRooms.com checks in with VisitBritain to standardise hotel star ratings

[17th September, 2007] - LateRooms.com ( http://www.laterooms.com ) has joined forces with VisitBritain to bring its star ratings system in line with Britain’s national tourism agency. The late availability hotel specialist is the first online site to use the official national classification system to rate its hotels, bed and breakfasts and guest houses. This will ensure customers know the standards of quality they can expect when making a reservation and will cut down on confusion over the type of accommodation being booked.

Information about accommodation for leisure and business visitors – checked by VisitBritain’s independent assessors and awarded between one and five stars – will be fed into LateRooms’ own hotels database, ensuring that the information appearing on its site is consistent and regularly updated.

Initially, over 2,500 LateRooms hotels have been rated according to VisitBritain’s classification system. Hotels not currently assessed by VisitBritain will remain on LateRooms' site but will be rated as self-classified. Customers interested in this type of accommodation will be able to make use of LateRoom’s extensive customer review information to see how other guests assessed the property.


“The quality of your accommodation can make or break your time away,” said Jeremy Brinkworth, general manager of quality at VisitBritain. “Holidaymakers need to know what type of accommodation they are booking and therefore what they can expect when they arrive, regardless of how they book. LateRooms is leading the online travel industry by working with us on this project.”

“We’re constantly looking at how we can provide a better service to our users and our link up with VisitBritain is a major step forward for us,” said Chris Allen, CEO at LateRooms. “Over the last few months we’ve been working closely with the organisation and our accommodation providers in order to minimise the gap between expectation and reality for people making late availability bookings online.”

(330 words)
NOTES TO EDITORS

About LateRooms (www.laterooms.com)
LateRooms is the UK’s leading online accommodation site offering late availability deals in over 14,000 properties worldwide, ranging from Bed and Breakfasts to five star luxury hotels.
LateRooms offers customers a saving of up to 70 per cent off the normal room rate for a variety of independent and branded hotels. Customers can book by phone or online 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. LateRooms specialises in last minute bookings but guests can book up to twelve months in advance.

About Visit Britain
• VisitBritain is responsible for promoting Britain as a world class tourist destination and for developing England’s visitor economy. It has representatives in 36 countries around the world and, in the last three years, has expanded into China, throughout Eastern Europe and Southeast Asia, and increased its presence in India with representatives in Bangalore and Mumbai.
• In 2006, there were 32 million visitors to Britain, 7% up on 2005. They spent £15.4 billion in the UK: a 8% increase on 2005.
• VisitBritain’s international website, www.visitbritain.com, was awarded World’s Leading Tourism Authority Internet Site for the third year in a row at the 2006 World Travel Awards by more than 200,000 travel and tourism professionals. With information provided in 26 different languages, every year over 12 million visits are made by international consumers to the 46 websites that make up visitbritain.com. VisitBritain plans to increase this to 25 million by 2009.


See this release online at: http://press.laterooms.com/press-releases/laterooms-com-checks-in-with-visitbritain-to-standardise-hotel-star-ratings.html