Hotels.com, StarMedia Launch Travel Booking Engine for Spanish-Speaking Netizens

Hotels.com and StarMedia, a wholly owned subsidiary of Wanadoo, have entered into an agreement to launch StarMedia Viajes, termed as the most extensive travel booking engine for Spanish-speaking web users.

Under the terms of the agreement, StarMedia will feature the Hotels.com booking engine in a new area within its portal designated as "Viajes y Hoteles" (Travel and Hotels).

The booking engine provides information and descriptions in Spanish for travel accommodation content, including hotels, car rentals, flights as well as vacation packages.

The new StarMedia Viajes area provides web users with over 11,000 special Internet rates, and features over 20,000 properties, available for booking worldwide. The StarMedia Viajes area is now featured as a StarMedia portal "Recommendation" at www.starmedia.com, according to the company.

Juan Jose Nunez, StarMedia´s vice president of operations said that following the beta testing of StarMedia Viajes, there has been a three-fold increase in traffic to the area during the first couple of months.

Nunez added that the initial response and the positive feedback from clients, supports company´s initial findings that a comprehensive Spanish-language travel booking engine would provide its web users with a critical service component, previously unavailable to them.