Hotwire.com Chooses Percussion Software’s Rhythmyx ECM to Speed Time-Sensitive Travel Offers, Enhance Best-of-Class Online Retail Experience

Rhythmyx Solution for Leading Discount Travel Site to Support Rapidly Changing Vendor Offerings, Improved Web Promotion Management
WOBURN, MA - October 31, 2005 - Percussion Software, a leading developer of practical software solutions enabling customers to maximize the value and quality of enterprise content, today announced that leading discount travel site, Hotwire.com, has chosen Percussion’s Rhythmyx Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system. Rhythmyx will enable Hotwire to respond more quickly to changes in product availability such as unsold inventory from hotels, airlines, car rental companies, and cruise lines. By responding faster to time-sensitive, "last minute" promotions with rapid content deployment, Hotwire can deliver a wider range of time-dependent choices - including vacation packages, special promotions and featured destinations - to the consumer, which ultimately drives revenue for Hotwire’s travel supplier partners.

"Hotwire is committed to providing consumers with a best-of-class retail experience, and we identified three functional areas to meet our goal: reduced time-to-market for content updates, enhanced promotion management, and real estate optimization" said Leland Zimmerman, director, store management, at Hotwire. "Rather than address these areas separately with home-grown tools, we decided to solve them all with Percussion’s Rhythmyx solution. It offers the tool set and functionality best aligned with our needs, allowing us to customize features to meet our exact specifications better and more easily than the other solutions we reviewed. Rhythmyx has the added benefit of reducing our reliance on engineering resources for content management, effectively increasing engineering resource availability for other initiatives"

Hotwire will bring its enhanced content management capabilities to market more quickly by using Rhythmyx’s FastForward for WCM quick start capabilities. Rhythmyx was also selected because of its ability to support Hotwire’s unique server environment, which includes its J2EE architecture.

"Hotwire joins the growing list of Rhythmyx customers that are leveraging its combination of robust out-of-the-box functionality and easy customization to enhance online retail capabilities" said Barry Reynolds, CEO of Percussion Software. "By enabling companies like Hotwire to react more quickly to time-dependent business opportunities with rapid content deployment, Rhythmyx improves online sales, boosts revenues and enhances the Web user experience"

About Hotwire
Hotwire.com is a leading discount travel site with low prices on airline tickets, hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises and vacation packages. Launched in 2000, Hotwire negotiates deep discounts from its travel suppliers to help distribute their excess inventory. Hotwire is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. (NASDAQ: EXPE). For more information, visit www.hotwire.com.

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Pam Foote

for Percussion

Parker Communications

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