24th April 2006

London, UK – April 24th , 2006 - Fluency Voice Technology, (www.fluencyvoice.com) the speech recognition application company, today announced that Travelodge, the UK’s number one budget hotel brand is filling more rooms and  offering 24x7 phone bookings thanks to its speech self-service initiative. Travelodge has also substantially boosted customer service and exceeded expectations for increased room occupancy.

Travelodge, which prides itself on blazing the innovation trail, has implemented the technology to bring all of the functionality of its advanced Website to the telephone, giving hotel customers the ability to find and book its hotels by phone, 24 hours a day, from any location.

“A proportionof our business comes from last-minute bookings, made from the roadside or by customers who find themselves in a city centre suddenly needing a room for the night,” explains Shona Fraser, Travelodge’s director of revenue and reservations.

To capture more business from these customers, Travelodge wanted to extend the benefits that can be enjoyed on its Website to guests making bookings by phone. The speech system uses Fluency’s Locator, part of the Virtual Speech Agent (VSA) Suite ™, which gives the caller the ability to quickly identify the nearest Travelodge hotel(s) based on a given location. Travelodge can advise the caller regarding latest availability, offer them the best rate for a room; and with Payment Capture can make reservations at any time of day or night. Using Contact Capture, the Fluency virtual agent will then capture the full contact and address details for the reservation.

Travelodge was introduced to the Fluency speech recognition application by its Director of Reservations, who had used the technology when working for another hotel chain,

“What impressed us the most was the fact that it could use our Website as its platform,” Shona adds. “We have invested extensively in our Website over the last 18 months, and are very proud of some of the innovative features on there, such as the ability to find the best-rate room in the area at the touch of a button. Fluency has allowed us to maximise this investment by extending the same capabilities to the phone, offering best room rates only previously available on the Web, due to the low cost of handling the enquiry.”

The ease of integration also meant that the Fluency application could be implemented at great speed. “We scoped the project in April 2005, the solution was built by July, live in August – in 270 hotels!” she says. “We were extremely impressed, and everything went very smoothly.”

Travelodge expected the Fluency tool to handle 300,000 calls between August and January, yet the application managed double that figure. “Take-up of the facility by customers has been first rate,” says Shona.

Following such a successful start, Travelodge is now planning to roll out a series of new services based on the application over the coming months. These include the ability to cancel and amend bookings using the Fluency virtual speech agent, and to request hotel directions to be received by email or SMS message. Customers will also be able to identify themselves as previous customers, so that every hotel will know their preferences automatically.

“Our philosophy as a company is to reduce the cost of customer acquisition so that we can increase our room occupancy by selling more rooms at lower rates,” Shona concludes. “Fluency has enabled us to do that. It is an excellent fit with our business.”

About Fluency Voice Technology

Fluency Voice Technology is a leading provider of packaged speech recognition applications for use in call centres. Our solutions enable enterprises to significantly reduce costs and enhance customer service by automating much of the high volume call centre activities.

Key sectors for which Fluency has developed applications are Financial Services, Travel & Transport, Utilities, Telecoms and Retail. Fluency has always been at the forefront of speech recognition and has changed the way in which businesses use speech by introducing the first ever packaged speech application in 2002. Fluency has offices in the UK, US and India.