Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts Unveils Multilingual Interactive Mobile Website

Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Asia Pacific's leading luxury hotel group, has launched the industry's first multilingual user-friendly mobile website at http://www.shangri-la.com, providing guests with convenient access anytime and anywhere from their smartphone devices. The mobile website allows guests to reserve, modify or cancel a booking with real-time availability. In addition, members of Shangri-La's guest recognition program, Golden Circle, can use their profiles for quicker reservations.

Created with simplicity and comprehensiveness in mind, Shangri-La's new mobile website is available in English, Chinese and Japanese and designed specifically for popular smartphones such as Apple iPhone, BlackBerry, Android and Nokia Nseries smartphone screens. Mobile-friendly features include a simple navigation system for easier and faster hotel searches and bookings, a clean and clutter-free design, an enhanced photography presentation and interactive maps.

"Mobile devices are increasingly used by travellers to get connected to the Internet on the road and we are confident that our new mobile website will be invaluable to guests who prefer the convenience of a smartphone. We recognise the inherent usability issues with today's smartphones and have addressed them with the latest mobile web technology to offer one of the most user-friendly mobile web browsing experiences in the travel industry," says Michael Leong, director of corporate e-business, Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts.

Enhanced photography presentation and interactive maps are two further firsts for hotel mobile websites. Optimized for the Apple iPhone, users can click on to picture thumbnails to view hotel photographs in full-screen mode, a function that uses the iPhone's accelerometer mode to switch between portrait and landscape orientations.

The mobile website also features interactive Google maps that allow users to zoom in to street level details to help find their way to a Shangri-La or Traders hotel. Navigating http://www.shangri-la.com via a smartphone is made easy by the cleanly laid out pages and information is displayed on demand to minimize screen clutter. Another design feature is the reduced need for typing while browsing the website, helping users to navigate more quickly by avoiding the use of typically unwieldy smartphone virtual keyboards.