Hotel booking site Hotels.com has expanded its operations in Eastern European market with the launch of six new local language sites in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Croatia.

Published: 01 May 2008

Hotel booking site Hotels.com has expanded its operations in Eastern European market with the launch of six new local language sites in Latvia, Estonia, Lithuania, Ukraine, Slovakia and Croatia.

The initiative is part of Hotels.com's continued roll-out across the EMEA region and has seen each of the six sites go live with IP-based country recognition, local-language interfaces and local currency pricing.

The new local languages sites are: http://hrvatska.hotels.com/ - Croatia;

http://eesti.hotels.com/ - Estonia; http://latvija.hotels.com/ - Latvia;

http://slovensko.hotels.com/ - Slovakia; http://lietuva.hotels.com/ - Lithuania;

http://ukrayina.hotels.com/ - Ukraine

These launches take the total number of sites operated by Hotels.com in the EMEA region to 32 sites including those in the UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Scandinavia, Poland, Russia and Benelux. The launch of the new local language sites follows hot on the heels of the launches in Greece, Turkey, Czech Republic, Hungary and Iceland at the beginning of 2008.

"The launch of the six new sites marks our continued march eastwards. These are emerging markets for online travel and although the Hotels.com product has been available to these territories through an English language site, we are aware that it is the local language sites that are key to unlocking these markets' full potential," said Patrik Öqvist, Marketing Director EMEA, Hotels.com.

Each of the newly launched sites will reflect the new Hotels.com 'Wake up Happy' brand positioning that was launched in the UK in 2007 and throughout Europe in early 2008.