June 16, 2003

Le Pavillon in New Orleans Reaps 800% Higher Response Rate with New Guest Online Comment Card
Digital Alchemy^® Drives Repeat Business for Hotel Companies, Independents with 25% Completion Rate for Online Comment Card in its Email-Based CRM Suite

FORT WORTH, Texas - Digital Alchemy, the leading provider of email-based CRM solutions for hotel management companies, today announced a major addition to its popular Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager^SM email product that gives hoteliers a powerful tool for enhancing their brand, inspiring guest loyalty, and driving repeat business. The new Online Comment Card module in Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager provides an online, automated mechanism for sending email thank-you notes with click-open comment cards to guests immediately after their departure. This allows guests to clearly and candidly express their views while a hotel’s staff or amenities and services are still fresh in their minds, and enables management to gain invaluable insights for creating strategies to maximize guest satisfaction.

“The Online Comment Cards we get back from our guests are a rich source of information for refining our operations, improving guest offerings, and creating on-target promotions for our properties,” said Ted Bogan, director of revenue at the upscale Le Pavillon in New Orleans. In addition to 219 guest rooms, the “Belle of New Orleans” also has seven themed suites including a plantation home and medieval castle. “Before we started using the Online Comment Cards four months ago, we received 10 hardcopy comment cards a week. Now we’re averaging 80 e-comment cards a week.

Guests are more comfortable replying, whether it’s criticism or praise, when they’re in the comfort of their own home. They sometimes write five or six paragraph responses, and we read each one in a weekly managers’ meeting. We regard the Online Comment Cards as a reliable indicator of our performance in meeting and surpassing guests’ expectations.”

According to Digital Alchemy president Don Hay, “Our new Online Comment Card module is at the heart of what Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager is all about – hoteliers using technology to solidify customer relationships and forge guest loyalty. Providing guests the ability to conveniently give feedback and ‘have their say’ within 24 hours after checkout is critical in enabling hotels to make more personal contact with guests, and win the repeat business essential for success in the highly competitive lodging marketplace.”

Hay noted that the new Online Comment Card module marks an important extension to Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager^SM by providing:

• Guest feedback in an email reply that goes directly to a designated manager for immediate response to guest suggestions, and a timely reply to each guest;
• Monthly management reports summarizing, categorizing and analyzing guest comments, and assigning scores based on favorable and unfavorable comments;
• Instant access to individual guest responses with their stay information, providing the ability to take immediate action as appropriate.
• A dramatic increase in guest responses over traditional paper comment cards with a 25% completion rate being commonplace.

Email Product Suite With Five Modules Helps Build Occupancy During Non-Peak Seasons
The Online Comment Card module augments the wide range of guest relationship-building capabilities already available in the suite’s core e-Relationship Manager and its other specialty function modules -- Full House^SM, QuickSilver Data Wizard^SM, and E-Blast Manager^SM.

Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager^SM enables hotel management companies and individual hotels to propel their customer relationship management initiatives by using graphical Web page-like (HTML format) emails to affordably establish one-on-one personalized relationships with guests. Emails may include attractive pictures, links to on-property activities and location-specific events, maps, and weather information -- all of which serve to reinforce a guest’s property decision, enhance the hotel’s brand recognition, and generate revenue. Automatically sent emails include:

• Reservation confirmations sent minutes after guests books their hotel room;
• Pre-stay marketing email that arrives 7 to 10 days before the guest stay, to highlight and promote on-property amenities;
• Cancellation notice that invites price shoppers to call back;
• Thank you notes sent immediately after departure.

The Full House^SM module helps hotels build occupancy by sending targeted email marketing messages to previous guests at the times they are most likely to be interested in receiving them. Digital Alchemy’s software uses guest information from a hotel’s Property Management System (PMS), such as how far in advance guests booked their previous visits, how much they paid, days of the week they traveled and stayed, etc. This information helps determine the best offer to send and when to send it. Unlike email “spam,” Full House sends emails infrequently and only when guests are likely to be most receptive. All communication with guests is first approved by hotel personnel, and consistent with existing marketing efforts. A key benefit of Full House is an increase in occupancy during non-peak seasons.

The QuickSilver Data Wizard^SM extracts valuable guest information from a PMS, generates reports and delivers them immediately by email to a hotel’s management team. Specialized reports include: guest demographics, guest email addresses, accurate Average Daily Rate (ADR), VIP and frequent-stay demographics, arriving/departing VIP, travel agent performance, plus other standard and customized reports.

Digital Alchemy’s E-Blast Manager^SM enables hotel management to precisely control email marketing distribution. The E-Blast module uses email addresses extracted from the PMS and other sources to keep guests informed about hotel activities and invite them back to the property. Email promotions can be targeted based on geographic and demographic characteristics, known guest preferences, and other specialized criteria.

Pricing and availability
The Online Comment Card module is already in use at prominent full-service business properties and resorts. For pricing information on the entire Data2Gold e-Relationship Manager^SM product suite contact Kathryn McGrath at (817) 249-0757 or via e-mail: kMcGrath@Data2Gold.com.

About Digital Alchemy^®
Digital Alchemy’s team of experts has extensive experience in the hospitality industry, and understands the need of hotel management companies and independent hotels for software solutions that affordably increase customer loyalty and repeat business; stimulate higher on-property spending; and improve guest service and operational efficiency. The company’s Data2Gold e-Relationship ManagerSM product, with four additional modules, provides an unmatched range of advanced email-based CRM capabilities that increase the effectiveness of hoteliers’ marketing programs. Digital Alchemy’s rapidly expanding customer base includes widely known independent hotels and resorts as well as many Holiday Inn, Radisson, Embassy Suites, Sheraton, Westin, Doubletree, Ramada Inn, Travelodge and Sheraton Four Points hotels. Digital Alchemy is on the Internet at http://www.Data2Gold.com, and Data2Gold e-Relationship ManagerSM email samples may be viewed at http://Data2Gold.com/samples.htm. For further information contact Don Hay at (817) 249-0757 or via e-mail: sales@Data2Gold.com. At HITEC call Don at (817) 300-2536.

For further information contact:

Julie Squires
Softscribe Inc.
404-256-5512
julie@softscribeinc.com

or

Kathryn McGrath
Phone: 817.249.0757
E-Mail: kmcgrath@data2gold.com