4 January 2005

The University of Manchester Ensures that Delegates Make it to the Venue on Time, thanks to Multimap’s Door-to-Door Travel Directions

Multimap, Europe’s leading online mapping company, today announced the deployment of its “Travel Directions” service on www.meeting.co.uk, The University of Manchester's events website. The service provides step-by-step travel directions and plots the route on a map, from any start point in the country, to make the journeys of conference delegates and organisers alike as smooth and easy as possible.

Visitors to www.meeting.co.uk click on the “Enter here” link on the site home page, followed by the “Location” link that subsequently appears. To access Multimap’s “Travel Directions” service, users then click on the “Multimap service” link that appears on-screen. Next, they enter their postcode, select a venue from a drop-down list of 20 options, opt for the ‘quickest’ or the ‘shortest’ route, and hit “Get directions”. Multimap delivers clear, user-friendly, step-by-step directions from start to end point; cumulative estimated journey times and distances; and links to detailed maps of each step. An overview map that plots the entire journey also appears, and users click on forward and backward arrows to move between street-level maps of each step of the journey.

Richard Handscombe, General Manager of Sales & Marketing in the conference department of The University of Manchester, said, “Thanks to the recent exciting merger of UMIST and The Victoria University of Manchester, we can now offer our clients a much wider and more flexible range of facilities. Our web site is the showcase for these facilities, and the quality of all the services provided on it has to be in line with that of the venues themselves. To this end, Multimap was the obvious mapping partner of choice. Its robust infrastructure can cope with surges in volume at any time of the year and its mapping data is of excellent quality. The travel directions delivered are accurate and easy-to-follow, and ensure a smooth journey for all parties involved in a conference or seminar. In short, we are delighted with the services!”

Willem Mijnarends, Head of Sales, Multimap, commented, “We are really pleased to announce the provision of our mapping services on the University of Manchester’s event web site. Web sites are increasingly becoming the first port of call for conference organising companies, so it’s of paramount importance that the first impression for potential customers is a good one. The 24x7 accessibility of our services, combined with our excellent mapping data and up-to-date travel directions has made us the mapping platform for well over 700 business partners, and we are delighted to welcome The University of Manchester on board.”

About Multimap

Multimap is Europe's leading provider of mapping and location-based services. The company delivers more online maps, point-to-point driving directions and geo-spatial ("where's my nearest?") searches to more companies than any other supplier in Europe. All services are offered on mobile, PDA, kiosk, and interactive TV platforms and in multiple languages.

The public website, www.multimap.com, provides a range of free, useful services to assist with everyday life. Key features include street-level maps of Europe, USA, Canada and Australia; road maps of the world; door-to-door travel directions; aerial photographs; weather forecasts; links to location information; and services such as hotel, restaurant and entertainment booking. The public site attracts over 7.3 million unique users, registers more than 140 million page impressions every month, and is one of the top 10 most visited websites in the UK. Multimap recently featured in The Sunday Times Fast Track 100 league table of fastest-growing unquoted UK companies across all sectors.

About www.meeting.co.uk

In October 2004, UMIST, and the Victoria University of Manchester - two of the universities most active in the academic conference sector - came together in an historic merger, creating Britain’s largest unitary university, The University of Manchester. The launch of their joint conference facilities under the “meeting.manchester” banner brings much more flexibility, a vastly wider range of facilities, and a wealth of experience to both sets of clients, firmly positioning Manchester not only as the “Knowledge Capital”, but also as the Conference Capital of Britain.

The marketing mix at such large and complex venue is very varied, but of increasing importance, is the website. Some years ago, we were fortunate enough to secure the address www.meeting.co.uk, and began development of the site. The aim is to inform potential clients of the range of facilities and services we offer, in a way which encourages them to want to know more, and to contact us for further information. During the last two years, our “hit” rate has increased from 12,000 per month to 250,000, and actual conference enquiries, which were ten about 5 per week, are now arriving at 5 per day! Statistics show that the location page is the most popular by far, and the Multimap directions are used by prospective clients and conference delegates alike.