Sitecore Recognizes Thomas Cook Travel Group as International Sitecore Site of the...

Sitecore Recognizes Thomas Cook Travel Group as International Sitecore Site of the Year

Upgraded Website Delivers Powerful Combination of Lively and
Relevant Content That Brings Destinations Home to Millions of
Customers
SAN FRANCISCO--(Business Wire)--
Sitecore, the leading provider of .NET Web Content Management
System (CMS) software, today announced that Thomas Cook Travel Group,
a leading international leisure travel group, has been named the
International Sitecore Site of the Year. Thomas Cook has a portfolio
of market leading travel brands across Europe and North America.
Utilizing Sitecore's Web CMS, the new website brings a complete and
seamless online experience for its customers, clearly providing
customers with compelling content that make them excited to book a
trip with the company.

Throughout Sitecore's wide International Region which contains
hundreds of sites, nominations from partners and customers identified
ways in which their sites created more effective business processes
and advanced their online strategies. The Sitecore judges considered
creativity, integration with rich data sources and applications,
ability to educate, inform and motivate to action, and the overall
user experience.

Several features distinguish the winning Thomas Cook Travel sites.
They have deployed a highly configurable eCommerce system that
increased their total number of online sales for its multiple brands,
as well as more than 1,000 co-branded sites across multiple countries.
Customers can now see more details about relevant destinations or trip
packages, and search for additional information. Moreover, Thomas Cook
Travel provides product channels that direct customers into the
sections of the site that most reflect their interests.

"By combining the strengths of Sitecore and other technologies,
we're able to give our customers a compelling, interactive
experience," said, Wim Vermaesen, IT Director of Thomas Cook Travel.
"Our sales have increased as a result of Sitecore and our new
website."

Sitecore enables Thomas Cook Travel to leverage information from
its merchandising system and extend and enrich it to create a
compelling user experience on the site. Additionally, Sitecore
provides an extensive range of well-documented API's, allowing fast
and powerful integration development of customer service and
merchandising functions. This enables Thomas Cook Travel to
transparently integrate Sitecore's technology with other applications
such as Fredhopper Access Server, SQL Server SSIS, and AJAX
technologies to deliver a captivating user experience.

"This was clearly a huge project, and it's not often that you see
a Web Content Management Solution involved in application type sites,"
said Peter Oyserman, President, Delaware Consulting. "Sitecore's
architecture allowed us to bring together several different
technologies to seamlessly create an amazing customer experience.
Sitecore offers great integration capabilities, and we have taken
advantage of that to deliver a top-notch solution to the Thomas Cook
Group."

Thomas Cook Group plc is a leading international leisure travel
group, with a portfolio of market leading travel brands across Europe
and North America. Each year more than 19 million people choose to
travel with Thomas Cook Group plc, buying their holidays from Thomas
Cook Group's network of more than 3,000 owned or franchised travel
stores, online or through a call center.

"We were thoroughly impressed with how the Thomas Cook Travel
Group has been able to enrich and enhance their sites," said Torben
Brams, Vice President, International Sales, Sitecore. "We congratulate
the company for its achievement in taking advantage of the
capabilities of Sitecore's Web CMS to offer a powerful combination of
lively and relevant content that brings its destinations home to its
customers."

About Sitecore

Sitecore's Web Content Management System (CMS) and focused
software solutions enable companies to deliver compelling web
experiences. Sitecore's award-winning CMS software makes it easy for
businesses to create and keep up-to-date dynamic, full featured Web
sites of all types. Sitecore's industry leading flexibility and
scalability allows companies to better leverage their content to
improve customer experience and drive business growth.

Thousands of public and private organizations, including national
governments and Fortune 500 companies utilize Sitecore solutions for
their Web sites. These organizations have created and now manage over
5000 dynamic Web sites with Sitecore including Microsoft, Sara Lee,
Siemens, Toshiba, Omni Hotels, Computer Associates, WebTrends and
Atlanta Falcons.

About Thomas Cook Travel Group plc

Thomas Cook Group plc was formed on 19 June 2007 by the merger of
Thomas Cook AG and MyTravel Group plc. The new company is one of the
world's leading leisure travel groups with sales of around GBP 9
billion (EUR 12 billion), 19 million customers, 30,000 employees, a
fleet of 97 aircraft, a network of over 3,000 owned or franchised
travel stores and a number of hotels and resort properties. It has
operations in four regions: UK & Ireland; Continental Europe (Germany,
Austria, Belgium, France, the Netherlands, Poland, Hungary, Slovenia
and Slovakia); Northern Europe (Sweden, Norway, Denmark, Finland) and
North America (Canada and USA); and German airlines operating under
the Condor brand.

PR@vantage (for Sitecore)
Rob Adler, 415-984-1970, ext. 104
radler@pr-vantage.com

Copyright Business Wire 2008