The Hilton hotel chain is investing £8m in an e-commerce strategy to offer localised marketing though country specific websites in its biggest markets.

The company believes the investment will dramatically boost online bookings and achieve cost savings through the consolidation of call centres.

Tim Davis, senior vice president of distribution and e-commerce at Hilton International, explained that the project would underpin efforts to drive a quarter of revenues through Hilton-brand websites over the next five years.

"This is a significant investment for Hilton. As customers migrate from using the telephone to using the internet for selecting and booking hotels, we want to be more competitive and build out market share," he said.

"There are cost savings with this project but this really is about driving market share."

Approximately $1bn of the Hilton Group's $16bn revenues were generated online during 2002, and 11 per cent of all rooms were booked through the web. "We want to grow that to 20 per cent by 2007," said Davis.

The country-specific websites are based on a single global technology platform using an Oracle database, a BEA web engine and content management from Interwoven.

Prime contractor Sapient will provide integration between applications, including Hilton's reservation and customer profiling systems and bespoke development.

"Sapient built the website for Opodo, which was a good reference, and Sapient was also very cost competitive. All the physical development is done in India but they have experts in all our source markets," said Davis.

The deal with Sapient also includes an additional £1m annual support contract.

Ongoing software development, particularly to develop CRM functionality for loyalty card members in the next year, will also add to the cost of the project.

"Phase one is getting the site up and running, but clearly we won't stop development on the site," explained Davis.

The first site - in the UK - was completed a few weeks ago, and will be followed by Germany later this month. The entire project is expected to take 50 weeks and is due to be completed in October this year.

"To say that the project has been issue free would be wrong; a project of this scale will always have issues," said Davis.

"Sapient is the glue and is responsible for making sure everything works, but we have direct contractual agreements with all 12 technology suppliers.

"The design phases are critical. For us it was a six-month process involving people from all over the business.

"My advice is to focus on internal communications about why you're doing this because it impacts thousands of people and they will make it fail if they're not motivated."