Arabnet Arabnet

HotelsCombined.com, a leading hotel discovery and price comparison website, just released a new version of its ‘i Find Hotels’ application, in addition to various stats on the Middle East online travel business.

The Middle East is one of the leading growth drivers in the mobile travel market field

HotelsCombined has tracked growth rates in the MEA regions that are 700% stronger than those of the US and more than 500% stronger than those in Europe. Nevertheless, almost 80% of the bookings made by users in the MEA region were generated through the English version of the App. “Hence the approach of offering the App both in English and Arabic, that addresses the full scope of users in the Middle East”, says Hichame Assi, Head of International Strategy for HotelsCombined.

Additionally, estimates have shown that the average booking value in the Middle East, which is the revenue generated through each mobile booking, exceeds Europe’s and North America’s revenue’s twofold. “Despite the higher maturity and higher device penetration in the established markets such as US & Europe, the MEA region can easily compensate the lack of ‘mobile maturity’ through clearly higher booking values.”, says Hichame Assi.

i Find Hotels v.1.6

In response to these indicators HotelsCombined has now released the brand-new version of the ‘i Find Hotels’ application free for iPhone and iPad. Version 1.6 guarantees a more engaging user experience, allowing the user to easily find and compare prices of hundreds of booking sites at once, in addition to an increased number of hotels.

A roundup of the 1.6 version

• Dramatically increased number of hotels
• Functionality to search for hotels near a current location
• Organising and sorting functionality to search results by Price, Popularity, Location and Airport filters
• Complete details for every hotel - descriptions, ratings, maps, images and more
• ‘Shake for map’-option - Quickly and easily find hotel locations on a street level map
• Hotel rates in the currency of the user’s choice
• High definition graphics, optimised for the iPhone 4 Retina display
• ‘Book by phone’-option (with supported hotels)