Accor North America Selects VFM Interactive
To Distribute Rich Media Tours for Motel 6 Locations
DALLAS, TX / TORONTO, Canada, August 14, 2008. Accor North America, one of the nation's largest owners and operators of economy lodging, announced today that it has entered into an agreement with VFM Interactive to provide rich media management and distribution services to its Motel 6 properties.
As part of the agreement, VFM will distribute newly created online video tours for participating Motel 6 properties to partner travel and travel-related websites, including major online travel agencies, travel research sites, search and meta-search engines, portal, as well as major travel intermediaries such as the Global Distribution Systems (GDSs) and Pegasus. In addition, Accor North America will utilize VFM's web-based digital media management platform, Vscape, to manage and distribute Motel 6 property photos to VFM's extensive distribution network.
"We have long been believers in the importance of rich media in marketing hotels online," said Anne Lawrence, VP, Distribution Services for Accor North America. "Recently, we created rich media tours for many of our Motel 6 properties so we could more effectively showcase all of what our Motel 6 properties have to offer to online consumers. Given that VFM has long distributed rich media for our North American Sofitel and Novotel hotels, we knew that with their unmatched distribution reach they were the perfect partner to ensure that our Motel 6 message would also reach as many online consumers as possible."
"We are delighted to have been selected once again by Accor North America to help them market their properties more effectively across the Internet," said Paolo Boni, president and CEO of VFM Interactive. "Numerous studies have now shown that rich visual content is the most effective tool to convey a hotel's value proposition to online consumers. As a result, as the economy slows and consumers become more value conscious, having rich media widely distributed online is a very effective and economical way to drive more bookings and support higher ADR."
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