Cambridge, Cambridgeshire -- (SBWIRE) -- 05/04/2012 -- In the course of 2012 and beyond, the process of hotel search is being significantly transformed. Business travelers and tourists hoping to book a room are presented with more selections than at any other time. Countless hotel search engines and comparison sites contend for their attention on the web, each one with its own selling point. Even so, in spite of the congested online market for hotel search, it would appear that there is always space for more web based expansion when you have a bright idea.

According to PhoCusWright Inc., a market research company, $33.8 billion was spent in booking hotel rooms online last year. Out of that total, a stunning 55% of bookings, over half, were still placed on hotels' own websites, instead of through an online travel agent or hotel search engine. The share claimed by online travel agents is rising quickly, but the point is that there's still plenty of space for new hotel search engines to make a name for themselves.

From HotelSweep Co-Founder Chris Doman, "We asked ourselves why most people are simply going direct to the hotels' own websites to secure their booking. It seems as though most hotels around the globe still save their best prices for their own websites, and do not necessarily give their cheapest rates to web based comparison engines like Expedia."

HotelSweep is a brand new Hotel Search Engine aiming to capitalize on this state of affairs for the benefit of both tourists and hotel budsinesses. With the help of direct information extraction technology, it grabs rates and data direct from the Hotel websites themselves.

Introduced in February this year, HotelSweep has been featured on CNN, Fox News, MSNBC, KDSK and several travel blogs. While HotelSweep covers a myriad of different hotels, the unique selling feature is powerful, no-nonsense budget room search, aiming to bring holidaymakers the best deal possible just by showing more of the less well-known hotels than any other website in the industry.

Due to a rise in media & customer interest, HotelSweep is evolving fast - "After the achievements of Version 1, the team are well on the road to releasing the next version of the website" reports Chris. So, what can we expect?

"The debut of potential game changers into the Hotel search sector, like Google Hotel Finder and Roomkey, encouraged us to formulate serious expansion plans" says Richard Lewis, Co-Founder. "To start with, we are expanding our hotel coverage from 50,000 hotels to three hundred and fifty thousand - a 7 fold increase. We're extending our geographical coverage as well - from now on, aside from just covering the USA and the UK, we'll also cover Asia, Australia and Europe. We'll also be substantially improving our search resolution for outlying regions of the USA, so expect more great deals in less well known towns and villages across the USA".

The HotelSweep team will also be taking measures to boost the usability of both the website and the android app, which they'll continue to support and develop. There are plans to incorporate considerably more information about Hotel facilities in the upcoming version, although as Richard and Chris highlight, "it will be really important to find the correct balance between quick, no-nonsense searching & richer information content - we hope to give travelers what they need most in order to make the ideal decision, never to flood them with less-than-useful infographics". In addition, HotelSweep will begin to feature user aggregated reviews for many of the hotels it covers, which is very good news.

HotelSweep will be going through some major changes in the coming weeks and months, but one thing that will not be changing is the original purpose of the hotel search engine. HotelSweep will stay true to its original commitment to budget travelers and independently owned guesthouses - there'll be no fees for inclusion, and the emphasis of the website will continue to be the budget traveler, although many high end stay options will also be included in the upcoming version.

"The pricing database we work with is unique, incorporating multiple hotel data sources - there's no other that can match it" says Richard. "We believe we have the technology and the incentive to offer the biggest and best coverage found in the world of Hotel Search".