Leonardo Chosen by Qunar, China’s Largest Travel Platform, for Hotel Visual Content

Leonardo Worldwide, technology and online media company for the global hospitality industry, today announced a new agreement with Qunar, China’s largest online travel platform, with over 75 million monthly visitors. Qunar has selected Leonardo’s technology to source, manage, and display high quality photos and rich media for hotels listed on its website and its regional affiliate websites.

As a result of the new agreement, Qunar becomes a direct travel channel in Leonardo’s VNetwork, the most extensive travel website network in the global travel industry comprised of more than 120 direct connect travel websites and tens of thousands of forward distribution channels. With Qunar in the VNetwork, hotels have the opportunity to reach and engage more travelers using this leading travel channel.

Seamless image sourcing and processing
By subscribing to Leonardo’s MediaConnect product, Qunar will gain access to over 1.5 million photos from the global travel industry’s largest hotel media library for over 100,000 GDS listed hotels globally and benefit from the following image sourcing and processing features:

• Delivery of media in multiple formats and sizes along with meta-data including categories and captions.
• Brand and hotel certified content that is updated regularly to ensure accuracy and freshness of content on Qunar’s websites and minimize rogue image issues.
• Media sourcing through advanced XML connectivity based on industry standards from HTNG (Hotel Technology Next Generation) and Open Travel Alliance.

Engaging multi-media display
In addition to increased quality and quantity of hotel images sourced from Leonardo’s hotel media library, Qunar will use Leonardo’s Multi-Media display technology to display multi-media presentations for hotels that subscribe to Leonardo’s VBrochure Online Merchandising System. These hotels benefit from having the visual stories they have created using their VBrochure licenses presented to travel shoppers on Qunar’s sites, resulting in:

• Increased engagement with travel shoppers curated stories with images, rich media and descriptive text displayed in topic based categories.
• Improved relevance and resonance with Qunar’s customers through targeted stories.
• Significant influence on booking decisions with visual content that makes the hotel stand out and communicates its true value.
• Further amplification of stories through social sharing icons prominently displayed for top social media sites.

“We are pleased to help Qunar improve the quality and quantity of hotel visual content on their sites. Adopting our technology to source and display hotel visual content ensures that they are providing the compelling, immersive visual experiences that travel shoppers have come to expect from online travel channels. We anticipate that the enhanced visual experiences on Qunar’s websites will result in increased conversions,” said John McAuliffe, Leonardo’s President.

“Compelling visual media is extremely important to today’s travel shoppers. Connectivity to Leonardo’s hotel media library will ensure that we meet consumer demands for high quality images and richer forms of visual content and maintain our place as a leader in the online travel market in China,” said Zhe Xibo, General Manager of Hotel Business Unit, Qunar.

About Qunar
Qunar, owned by Baidu, China’s largest search engine, is the world’s most popular Chinese travel platform, with 75 million monthly visitors. Qunar’s mission is to create and maintain a fun and hassle-free one-stop travel information source for Chinese travelers.

The company organizes an enormous amount of travel information, providing instant and thorough searches of flights, hotels, travel packages, group-buying deals and other travel-related information via its website and mobile applications.
With its intelligent and avant-garde technology, Qunar helps travelers find travel products of great value and travel information that best matches their needs.

Qunar means “where to go” in Mandarin Chinese. Learn more at www.qunar.com

About Leonardo
Leonardo Worldwide Corporation is the travel industry’s trusted provider of technology solutions that help hotel chains, hotel properties and travel websites manage, syndicate and display visual content. Leonardo has been the leader in hotel media management and distribution for more than a decade with the largest multi-channel marketing network in the industry. Adoption of the company’s new and improved cloud-hosted media display solution continues to grow among top hotel chains and travel websites. Leonardo continues to grow its offering of hotel digital marketing tools that enable individual properties to enhance their visual presentations on their websites, social media and mobile devices. Learn more about Leonardo at www.leonardo.com.