Capital Publishers is Ottawa�s largest publisher of local magazines, including WHERE Ottawa-Hull, Visitor Guide, Destination Planner�s Guide and Ottawa City Magazine. Spyre Infostructure Inc. is the creator of BOOKDirect Internet Reservations & Marketing System, the most powerful internet reservation system currently available to the hospitality industry. 

Ottawahotels.com will combine the content of whereottawa.com, which includes a comprehensive range of information for tourists, and Spyre�s hotel listing search engine and booking service. 

Steve Ball, publisher of WHERE Ottawa, says, �Our business is focused on the visitor market and our content is created specifically for tourists; this new web site is ideally positioned for users unfamiliar to the city. By partnering with BOOKDirect, we will be providing users with comprehensive visitor information and the most advanced hotel booking system available.� 

Michael Levinson, President & CEO of Spyre Infostructure, agrees the deal makes perfect sense. �From a hotel perspective, booking rooms on the Internet is growing in popularity.  We believe that every hotel ultimately will need to offer internet reservations just like having a toll-free telephone number.  Our BOOKDirect Pro system has been designed to put hotels in control of their own internet sales and marketing. It provides hotels with extraordinary yield management capabilities by enabling them to quote and receive on-line reservations in real-time for ANY rate they wish to offer (including corporate, negotiated, and group rates).  The site will include a listing of activities during the dates of a guest�s stay so that they can build an on-line itinerary of activities, make hotel reservations, book tickets for shows or attractions, and make reservations at the restaurant of their choice.  ALL the visitor interests will be covered in this new partnership.� 

The site is fully endorsed by Ottawa Hoteliers de L�Outaouais Inc (OHOI), the official voice of hotels in the National Capital Region.  John Consentino, President of OHOI, feels the combination is a powerful one. �Michael Levinson is well known in the local hotel scene.  As someone who was very active in the local hotel industry and business community, he has a thorough understanding of the hotel needs and the tourism dynamics of the region.  The BOOKDirect Pro system provides us with a complete solution for managing on-line reservations. With WHERE Ottawa managing the content and driving the traffic, we should have a truly functional tourist site that allows users to enhance their visit to the area.� 

The Ottawa web site should be operational in the fall of 2000 and expansion plans are expected to include other cities that publish WHERE Magazine. WHERE Magazine reaches more than 50 million readers each year through more than 700,000 hotel rooms in more than 40 markets in Canada, the United States, Europe and Asia.