Hotel booking is now location-aware with Ovi and HRS

Let’s do a quick round-up, everyone: raise your hand if you like traveling (I’m raising both my hands and one foot right now, by the way). Well, we have good news for you! Booking a hotel just got a lot easier with HRS, Europe’s leading online hotel reservation system, opening up its 250,000+ strong database [...]

Let’s do a quick round-up, everyone: raise your hand if you like traveling (I’m raising both my hands and one foot right now, by the way). Well, we have good news for you! Booking a hotel just got a lot easier with HRS, Europe’s leading online hotel reservation system, opening up its 250,000+ strong database of hotels to Maps users. That’s right, you can now easily…

• search hotels close to your current location,
• check real-time price and availability information,
• make the booking with just a couple of clicks (or taps) on your Nokia phone and finally,
• be guided to your hotel with the free turn-by-turn navigation service, all with Maps!

You can also search for hotel accommodation in the customary manner by simply entering the destination, the arrival and departure dates and the room category. The displayed hotels can be sorted according to individual preferences, such as the distance from the current location, the price or star rating. Useful information such as photos, hotel descriptions and average customer ratings is also available for display via the Ovi Maps service. You then only need to enter your contact details to make the booking at the desired hotel and choose whether you prefer to have your booking information sent to your device by SMS, email or both. Simple, eh?

The  service is available for Nokia devices that support Ovi Maps 3.03 (namely, Nokia 5800 XpressMusic, Nokia N97 Mini and Nokia 6710 Navigator), initially in Germany and Finland only. By ‘initially’ we mean: all other countries, sit tight because the HRS is heading your way as well soon! You can download Maps easily for free here, and the HRS service is then easily accessible via its own little icon, which is installed on the Ovi Maps homepage. For those users in Germany and Finland who have already downloaded the latest Ovi Maps, the HRS service will automatically appear on the homepage after signing into their Ovi account.

You can put your hands down now.

Source : http://blog.ovi.com/2010/03/05/hotel-booking-is-no...