Need to Get Away? Just Yell! - 23 December 1998
Once the Christmas presents are opened, the turkey has all gone and the relatives have returned home for another year, we can start to relax and dream of blue skies and foreign shores. So this is time to put the new computer to good use and pay a visit to Yell, the web site of Yellow Pages at www.yell.co.uk, where the first phase of Yellow Pages Travel is now live.
Visitors to the site can shop online for flights, accommodation, car hire and holidays via a partnership with MSN Expedia UK. You’ll be spoilt for choice as 75,000 last minute package holidays are also available which are updated every thirty minutes. Expedia uses one simple screen to display not just the published fares typical of the Internet, but also the discounted fares people really want - 2.5 tickets are sold via the site every minute!
To celebrate the launch, Yell are running an online competition which gives visitors the chance to win a holiday of their choice worth up to £2,500. So if you’ve ever fancied seeing the Mardi Gras in New Orleans, the carnival in Venice or celebrating the Chinese New Year in Hong Kong, all you have to do is complete a simple questionnaire and you could be on your way! 25 runners up will each be able to choose books or CD’s to the value of £25 from either The Internet Bookshop or IMVS. Both of these online stores are accessible via Yell.
The partnership with MSN Expedia marks the first phase of the Yellow Pages Travel service. Yell plans to build on this base and eventually offer it’s own one-stop travel stop for Internet users via a strategic alliance with FSS Computer Systems, a Bracknell-based computer company that develops and supplies computer software specifically for the travel industry.
The alliance will initially allow users of the Yell site to book cheaper schedule flights in real time from hundreds of airlines, including published and discounted fares and special offers. Yell are planning to develop the site further to offer other online reservation services such as hotel accommodation, car hire, holiday insurance, airline auctions, Eurostar, ferries and inclusive holiday packages.
