Happy birthday lastminute.com!

Online travel pioneer lastminute.com is turning ten on 21 October this year and to celebrate the retailer is having a range of offers and promotions everyday on the site to thank its loyal customers.

Ten years ago two genial entrepreneurs, Martha Lane-Fox and Brent Hoberman, decided to launch their own online travel and leisure retailer and despite doubts and people swearing that online travel was just a fad, lastminute.com has become one of the leading and most respected agencies in the industry.

To thank loyal customers special offers and promotions will appear on the site everyday throughout October and these include:

- From the actual birthday on 21 October customers will get a chance to enter a daily competition to win holidays, theatre tickets, city breaks, flights, thrilling experiences and hotel stays. Each day ten people will be randomly picked and the winners will be announced on the site everyday at 10 o’clock.

- The great hotel sale will take place throughout the month of October with great offers on hotels in Europe and the UK including up to 35% off a wide range of hotels, three nights for the price of two offers and further discounts on top secret hotels.

- Limited numbers of hotel nights, spa treatments, theatre tickets and restaurant deals at just £10 will also be available throughout October for customers to grab. More information on products, days and times for these special promotions will be posted on www.lastminute.com throughout October.

- 48 hour theatre sale – customers can lay their hands on great West End shows at up to 70% discount from 29 September to 1st October and from 13 to 15 October.

lastminute.com Managing Director John Bevan commented: “With these exciting offers we want to give something back to our customers who supported us over the last ten years. We are now looking forward to further successes in the next ten years.”

Statement from lastminute.com following the collapse of XL Airways

Flight only bookings with XL Airways
Flight-only booking on our website are eligible for a refund through ATOL, your credit card company or travel insurance. More information can be found by logging onto www.atol.org.uk & http://www.caa.co.uk/XLLeisureGroup.html

Where possible lastminute.com will try and find alternative flights for customers who still wish to travel, although this will be at their own expense and they will need to contact our Sales Team on 0871 2225969

Flight & hotel booking packaged together through our sites:
lastminute.com will try and find you alternative flights as near to your original flights as possible free of charge. Where this is not possible due to lack of availability, or customer no longer wishing to travel, lastminute.com will provide a full refund.

Package holiday bookings made on our site through 3rd party suppliers:
Customers who have booked a package on our site with another Tour Operator that contains XL Group products, should contact their Tour Operator for assistance. The name and number of your Tour Operator can be found on the bottom of your confirmation email.

Hotel bookings:
If you have booked a hotel with lastminute.com and XL flights elsewhere, we will cancel your hotel booking where possible should you not be able to travel. We will waive all our cancellation fees, however, we will not be able to waive cancellation fees imposed on us by the hotels themselves. Proof of XL Airways flights will be required at time of cancellation and this will need to be emailed to us

Car hire bookings:
Car hire customers unable to travel due to the cancellation of XL Airways flights, will be cancel and refund free of charge. Proof of XL Airways flights will be required at time of cancellation and this will need to be emailed to us.

lastminute.com and The Good Spa Guide create Spa Superpower

The Good Spa Guide’s reviews and ‘bubble’ rating implemented into lastminute.com’s spa pages

Leading online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com has joined forces with independent UK spa bible The Good Spa Guide to provide a one-stop shop for spa-goers.

The Good Spa Guide’s reviews of UK spas and its industry standard ‘bubble ratings’ will appear in lastminute.com’s spa section to help customers choose the best spa for them.

The Good Spa Guide’s reviews are conducted by a team of Spa Spies, who rate spas using a comprehensive set of criteria covering standards of facilities, customer service and value for money. These marks translate into a ‘bubble rating’, which is a one to five grading system similar to the hotel industry’s star rating.

lastminute.com Lifestyle Director Mark Bower said: “The tie up between lastminute.com and the Good Spa Guide creates a true spa superpower.

“lastminute.com’s comprehensive spa offering coupled with the Good Spa Guide’s industry-standard ratings and reviews makes lastminute.com the leading spa booking site.”

The Good Spa Guide Managing Editor Anna McGrall said: “The Good Spa Guide is delighted to be working with lastminute.com so spa-goers can book a spa day or stay with ease and confidence.”

Roll up, roll up, it's the last week of the Cool Hotel Pools Competition

A lastminute.com online photography competition to win a night's stay at luxury five star hotel The Berkeley has been running for the past three weeks and is now into its last seven days.

The final closing date for the competition is Monday, 8th September.

To enter and win the chance to spend a weekend lounging by the hotel's roof top pool all participants need is a great hotel pool photograph, either a funky shot taken at an ordinary pool or an image of the best pool they've ever visited on holiday and upload the picture to one of the photography groups we've set-up on Flickr and Facebook.

Flickr

Facebook

The team here at lastminute.com will then dive into the massive pile of online photographs and emerge holding the winning one aloft ready to notify the victor.

If you'd like to win a night's stay in one of London's best hotels (did we mention it has a roof-top pool?) then please post your photos on either of the sites and we'll look forward to veiwing your entry.

Best of luck.

lastminute.com first to incorporate the new mobile Google Gears Geolocation service

Customers can now use Google Gears from the new lastminute.com fonefood restaurant search service on Windows Mobile phones to find nearby restaurants.

The new geolocation service announced today as part of Google Gears allows users to determine their location, enabling the fonefood service to display nearby restaurants and deals.

The Google Geolocation API determines location using either nearby cell towers (from a mobile device) or a computer's IP address. The service is provided for free to both developers and users.

fonefood is the latest beta service launched by lastminute.com labs, allowing mobile users to search and book restaurants across 12 European countries.

The fonefood service, with Google Gears, is ideal for holidaymakers as they don’t need to type in their location to find local restaurants.

lastminute.com Head of Innovation Marko Balabanovic said: “The user’s location is a key part of the context that will enable better mobile travel experiences.

“We are very excited that Google gave us the chance to integrate Gears for Windows Mobile. Determining locations on the mobile internet has been a difficult problem for a long time and this is a great solution that works very well for the user without leaving their browser.”

Google product manager Charles Wiles said, "Location is increasingly important to people using the web, especially on their mobiles. lastminute.com's fonefood is a great example of the innovative location-aware applications that Gears makes possible."

To access fonefood, go to m.lastminute.com/fonefood on your mobile or text fonefood to 85959 in the UK.

lastminute.com launches fonefood

Finding the perfect place to eat and book need no longer be a problem. From today online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com launches fonefood, its new beta mobile restaurant booking service.

fonefood allows mobile users to search and book restaurants whilst on the go. It is available in 12 countries and gives users access to over 6,000 restaurants from cheap eats to fine dining. The restaurant bookings will be powered by leading online restaurant reservations provider, the Livebookings Network.

Users are given descriptions of nearby restaurants, with currently over a thousand available deals, discounts and promotions. Once they’ve chosen a restaurant there is no need to call, users can book directly on their mobile for free and receive an instant confirmation via sms text message—especially handy for users abroad who may not speak the local language.



fonefood is available on the internet at http://m.lastminute.com/ and will work on all modern handsets. Alternatively users can text fonefood to 85959 to get the link free of charge (only in the UK). The application uses Google Maps to show restaurants near the users’ location.

lastminute.com Head of Innovation, Marko Balabanovic said: “We are very excited to be launching fonefood as we see mobile becoming increasingly popular with people as a way to organise and make the most of their leisure time. This is just the start of many mobile capabilities that we are developing within the lastminute.com labs team this year.”

Livebookings COO David Norris added: “We recognise that increasingly people are taking the internet with them in their pockets and more of us expect to be able to get online anywhere at anytime. Savvy diners can now find a table to reserve on the move which is great if you are visiting a new city or if you happen to be out with friends and need to book there and then. We are proud to be able to power the technology that connects this great new cutting-edge multi-lingual service from lastminute.com to over 6,000 restaurants.”

Calling home on holiday by mobile gets cheaper with lastminute.com

Leading online travel and leisure retailer lastminute.com has become the only online travel and leisure retailer to distribute SIM4travel’s popular ‘travel SIMs’, giving customers better value mobile calls while travelling abroad.

The mobile phone has long since joined the trio of ‘money, ticket, passport’ that people routinely check they have with them before leaving home.

SIM4travel is a low cost mobile roaming network that allows travellers to avoid the high costs of using their mobile phone overseas. The service is provided via a SIM card that the customer simply inserts into their mobile phone in place of their usual SIM card.

The customer can then travel to over 110 countries around the globe and save up to 80% on calls. In over 50 countries, the customer will not have to pay for inbound calls – a fear of which stops some people from turning their phone on while abroad. Credit is easy to top up while at home or travelling.

lastminute.com UK Managing Director John Bevan said: “lastminute.com is delighted to be the only online travel retailer to offer its customers SIM4travel’s service.

“lastminute.com aims to give its customers the greatest breath of product in the travel and leisure industries and SIM4travel offering helps us to achieve that.”

Suk Grewal, marketing director at SIM4travel, said: “Even moderate phone use within the European Union can see a traveller quickly rack up a bill of more than £80 per week*.

“By using SIM4travel instead, a traveller might be able to upgrade their flight or room, choose a more convenient time to travel, or just save money on their trip,” he added.

www.globalsim.lastminute.com

*Based on receiving, and making, four 5-minute calls per day and retrieving voicemail once (two minute call), for seven days. Outbound calls charged at £0.35 per minute, inbound calls charged at £0.19 per minute, voicemail retrieval charged at £0.35 per minute.