Utell® Hotels & Resorts Unveils New Segmentation Strategy at ITB Berlin

New Segmentation Offers Hotels Unprecedented Targeted Marketing through “Collections” and “Niche Brands”
BERLIN (7 March 2007)

Utell Hotels & Resorts, a service of Pegasus Solutions, has launched a new segmentation strategy to its diverse portfolio of 3,600 hotels in more than 130 countries worldwide. The official launch, at ITB Berlin, comes with a number of high profile hotels already signed up to take part in the “Collections” and “Niche Brands” segmentation that Utell is now offering to its customers.

The new Utell Hotels & Resorts Collections and Niche Brands provides hotels with valuable sales, marketing and distribution support aimed at driving customers to member hotels through focusing on the type of hotel experience they offer. This new segmentation strategy will allow participating Utell member hotels to be targeted directly to the consumer for the first time. In turn, travel agents will benefit from the more comprehensive and streamlined products, which will help them to identify appropriate hotels and sell them more efficiently and professionally to their customers. Utell has already concluded a segmentation exercise with two global TMCs (Travel Management Companies) to reinforce its commitment to its global preferred trade partners on behalf of its hotels.

“These are exciting times for Utell Hotels & Resorts. We are proud to be known as the ‘hotel people’ and, having been in the business for over 75 years, we believe that we are best placed to re-shape the market for the benefit of hotels and consumers,” said Peter Fitzgerald, president of Utell Hotels & Resorts. “The introduction of Utell’s Collections and Niche Brands both improves and defines our offering allowing consumers to select hotels more easily. We have an outstanding portfolio of hotels to rival the largest of hotel brands and our niche marketing of our hotel’s amenities and services beyond the hotel rooms will service the trade and the consumer well.”

Through this new segmentation strategy, Utell’s member hotels can participate in elective programmes such as the Collections, which have been designed to promote hotels that offer similar services and activities around the world. The Collections portfolio will be promoted to specific target markets with an over-riding purpose to provide a new revenue-generating opportunity for members. The first of the Collections to be launched are Utell Golf and Utell Spa. The Utell Golf portfolio is suited to properties that can organise and manage every golfing need of the guest and are either on or adjacent to a golf course, or that have preferential agreements with nearby golf courses. The Utell Spa programme is for properties that provide extensive spa and wellness facilities onsite. There are plans to introduce further collections in the coming months, including Utell Beach, Utell Meetings and Utell Business.

Member hotels can also become part of Utell’s new Niche Brands – Luxury and Boutique – which will for the first time actively promote hotels offering similar levels of quality, products and services to specific audiences. This will enable the customer to find the hotel that meets their requirements. Additional marketing programmes for other Niche Brands - Superior, Value and All-Suites – will follow.

Each Utell Collection and Niche Brand will have its own consumer facing website, such as www.utellspa.com and www.utellgolf.com, maximizing Pegasus Solutions’ expertise and online reach in web and distribution technology. Members will also benefit from inclusion in high quality directories, electronic marketing to targeted hotel customers, active media engagement through public relations and advertising, e-mail database brand and promotional marketing and partnerships with signature websites relevant to each programme.

Utell Hotels & Resorts has moved towards segmentation to increase its competitive edge and to strengthen the Utell brand presence within the consumer, business and leisure arenas. High profile hotels already signed up to the Spa and Golf Collections and the Luxury and Boutique Niche Brands include Rotana Hotels, Warwick Hotels, the Colombus Hotel in Monte Carlo and the Imperial Hotel in Osaka.

Visitors to ITB can meet the Utell Hotel & Resorts team on the Pegasus Solutions stand at Hall 8.1 Stand 112 on 7-11 March 2007.

For further information, please contact: 

Utell Press Office
Mango PR Ltd
Tel: +44 (0) 20 74212507
Email: utell@mangopr.co.uk 

About Utell Hotels and Resorts
Utell Hotels & Resorts, a service of Pegasus Solutions, has a portfolio of 3,600 hotels in more than 130 countries worldwide, offering diverse products and services to suit every traveler’s accommodation needs, whether they are travelling for business or leisure. Established more than 75 years ago, Utell is regarded by travel agents as ‘the hotel people’ and look to us when organising hotels for their customers.

About Pegasus
Dallas-based Pegasus Solutions, Inc. is a global leader in providing technology and services to hotels and travel distributors. Founded in 1989, Pegasus’ customers include a majority of the world’s travel agencies and more than 78,000 hotel properties around the globe. Pegasus’ services include central reservation systems, electronic distribution services, commission processing and payment services, and marketing representation services, including the consumer Web site, www.hotelbook.com. The company’s representation services, including Utell® Hotels & Resorts and Unirez by Pegasus™, are used by more than 9,300 member hotels in more than 130 countries, making Pegasus the hotel industry’s largest third-party marketing and reservations provider. Pegasus has 16 offices in 11 countries, including regional hubs in London, Singapore and Scottsdale, Arizona. For more information, please visit www.pegs.com.

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