Agoda.com shines a light on hotel deals for the Vivid Sydney Festival

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is illuminating great deals on hotels in Sydney, Australia for the annual Vivid Sydney Light, Music & Idea Festival, which takes place this year from May 24 – June 10.

For the past 5 years, the festival has been wowing crowds with famous Sydney landmarks wrapped in thousands of meters of lights or used as massive canvasses, presenting giant expanses of rippling, morphing illuminated designs or photos. Earlier this year, the call went out worldwide for artists to send in expressions of interest, ensuring that the show will again have an international makeup reflecting a variety of backgrounds and cultures.

This year, the festival will showcase 60 installations, including favorites such as the illumination of the iconic Sydney Opera House and the Sydney Harbour Bridge. In addition to other light shows projected on a variety of local venues, sidewalks, promenades, and even inside tunnels, live musical shows by international artists and displays by leading creative, dance and performance groups will entertain crowds for the duration of the 18-day festival.

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Agoda.com aims high with great hotel deals for a trek up Mt. Kinabalu

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is providing great new deals on hotels in the Malaysian city of Kota Kinabalu to take advantage of high season climbing opportunities on the beautiful and surprisingly accessible Mt. Kinabalu, only 50km from the main city.

Although it’s one of the tallest mountains in Southeast Asia, Kinabalu is famed for being climbable without specialized gear and by almost anyone who is relatively fit. Despite an elevation of 4,093m above sea level, it rarely snows at the peak. Indeed, climbers will go through six separate vegetation zones on their climb to the top, from steamy Lower Mountain Forest at the bottom to frigid Subalpine at the peak. However, it can get very foggy and if it rains – which it does most afternoons – the environment can become downright miserable, with high winds and freezing temperatures that can quickly turn dangerous. For that reason, there is a well-worn climbing schedule that minimizes exposure and provides the best all-around hiking experience.

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Agoda.com partners with WuBook for great hotel deals in Russia

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is partnering with WuBook for a strategic partnership that will allow Agoda.com to add WuBook’s inventory of hotels in Russia to its global network.

WuBook, which was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in Fano, Italy, is one of the leading technology companies in the global hotel industry. Its hospitality software solutions – Channel Manager, Booking Engine, and PMS Zak, among others – offer a streamlined, convenient method for hotels to upload their rates and room details for easy distribution to online travel agents (OTA’s) and other popular channels.

Since opening in 2008 the company has seen rapid growth, and now has over 2,300 hotels worldwide. With this new partnership, Agoda.com customers can gain access to 500 previously unavailable hotels in the vast and fascinating country of Russia. From the fast-paced lifestyle of capital Moscow to the cultural and commercial hub of Saint Petersburg to the stark beauty of Siberia and the Russian Steppes, the true splendor of the country simply can’t be fully appreciated in a single trip.

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Agoda.com offers colorful hotel specials for Penang’s fabulous George Town Festival

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is getting in a creative mood in preparation for the upcoming George Town Festival, the most colorful and exuberant celebration of art, music, theater, dance, opera and film in Malaysia. This year the festival will be held from 7 June – 7 July, and Agoda.com customers who book hotels on a special festival webpage will enjoy 5% off of the already low prices.

The festival, commonly just called the GTF, began in 2010 as a platform to promote the rich artistic and cultural heritage of George Town, the capital of the state of Penang. Listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 2008 for its “unique architectural and cultural townscape without parallel anywhere in East and Southeast Asia,” the city is a product of centuries of maritime trading, where cultures, customs, religions and artistic styles mixed and thrived.

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Agoda.com offers new hotel deals for Hong Kong’s Cheung Chau Bun Festival

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is preparing a wide range of hotel deals to help celebrate the Cheung Chau Bun Festival, one of the most lively and enjoyable celebrations of the year, which this year will be held from May 14-18.

Chinese festivals are known for having deep historical significance, and often celebrate ancestral connections, important events, or protective deities. Despite a name that hints at a focus on food, the Cheung Chau Bun Festival actually manages to celebrate all three of the above qualities at the same time!

The story goes that in the late 1800’s the residents of Cheung Chau Island – a relatively small one near Hong Kong’s southwest maritime border – were beset by a plague that killed a large number of residents. Desperate, they turned to the god Pak Tai to help them, building an altar and holding a parade in his honor. Miraculously, the plague dissipated and the residents were saved, and to this day the same rituals are performed in honor of Pak Tai. Over the years, the weeklong celebration has grown to include the burning of paper effigies, dragon dances and the performance of various Taoist rituals.

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Agoda.com offers great Tokyo hotel deals for the colorful sakura season

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is listing some of the most stylish designer hotels in Tokyo to help celebrate the sakura season – known commonly outside of Japan as the cherry blossom season – one of the most beautiful times to visit the Land of the Rising Sun.

The hundreds of varieties of the Prunus tree spread across Japan are quite unremarkable for most of the year. However, come Spring the trees erupt in colorful waves of blossoms, in various shades of red, pink and white, blanketing parks and temples across the country in billions of tiny flowers. In Japanese culture the blossoms are highly symbolic, representing the fragility of life, the power of beauty, and the strength of a unified culture.

As the season approaches, the Japanese Meteorological Agency starts providing updates on the sakura zensen, roughly translated as the “cherry blossom front”, as it moves from the southern island of Kyushu in late March to the northern island of Hokkaido in mid-May. Once the season has finished, the flowers wither and die, and the countdown begins for a new season.

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Agoda.com showcases ten exciting rebranded & refurbished hotels in Paris

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is showcasing ten fantastic hotels in Paris that have undergone recent renovations or rebrandings to offer a new style of convenience and ensure the very best experience during a stay in the City of Lights.

Paris, of course, has been one of the world’s great cities since the 1^st century AD. Through wars and disaster and empires big and small the city has never lost its unique personality, emerging as a true 21^st-century metropolis whilst still retaining its centuries-old charm. Known for fine food, cutting-edge fashion and trend-setting design, there’s very rarely anyone who comes away unimpressed.

And when it comes to hotels, the selection in Paris is one of the world’s best, from tiny slivers of boutique hospitality to opulent palaces that redefine the word ‘luxury’. To celebrate the best that Paris has to offer, Agoda.com is featuring ten outstanding properties that have recently renovated or rebranded to modernize, update or redecorate in the name of classic French hospitality. Take a look at the hotels below and see which one is the best fit for a great Parisian holiday!

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Agoda.com celebrates Sinhalese New Year with great Sri Lanka deals

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is offering new deals on the striking island of Sri Lanka to celebrate the Sinhalese New Year, a major event for the ethnic population and the biggest holiday of the year.

Similar to other astrologically-determined New Year celebrations in Southeast Asia, such as Thailand’s Songkran or Vietnam’s Tết, New Year celebrations in Sri Lanka are boisterous and noisy, full of color and commotion and a perfect time to see the best that the island has to offer. This year, the holiday takes place on April 14.

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Agoda.com gets ready for Songkran with hotel specials in Bangkok and Chiang Mai

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq:PCLN), is offering fantastic hotel deals in Bangkok and Chiang Mai to celebrate Songkran, the Thai New Year.

The celebration is the biggest holiday of the year in Thailand – Christmas, Thanksgiving and New Year’s Eve all rolled into one. This year the official celebration days are April 13-15, with a few days tagged on to either end to compensate for the holiday falling on a weekend. It also might be a bit longer or shorter, depending on where you are – for instance, celebrations in Chiang Mai often go for a full week. Songkran is truly one of those events on a scale that has to be seen to be believed, and it’s hard to imagine that it came from such humble beginnings.

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Agoda.com lists early bird specials just in time for the Canton Fair

Agoda.com, Asia’s leading hotel booking site and part of Nasdaq-listed Priceline Group (Nasdaq: PCLN), has announced early bird hotel deals in Guangzhou, China in the lead up to the 113^th China Import and Export Fair, the largest trade fair in the region and a major event for importers, exporters, and manufacturers worldwide.

Also known as the Canton Fair, the twice-yearly event has been growing steadily since it first began in 1957, and has thrived with support by China’s Ministry of Commerce. In the decades since, China has emerged as a top tourist destination and a key component in the global trade engine, underlying the importance of the show to a vast number of industries.

The event will take place over three 5-day phases at Guangzhou’s huge Pazhou Complex: April 15-19, April 23-27, and May 1-5. The previous session boasted 58,714 standard booths from 24,213 exhibitors and enjoyed a turnover of more than USD 37.9 billion. But the Canton Fair is only a small part of what visitors can expect to see.

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