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Des Moines, Iowa (May 20, 2004)

CruiseCompete.com Lands Key Partners
Sites direct travelers to competitive cruise marketplace

The three leading cruise community web sites --Cruise Mates (www.cruisemates.com), Cruise Addicts (www.cruisefix.com), and Cruise Critic (www.cruisecritic.com), and have long been invaluable sources of information for anyone planning a cruise vacation. In addition to providing these heavily-used discussion forums, they now have something else in common: partnerships with CruiseCompete.com, a web site that allows consumers to request a quote, and get multiple competing responses from independent agencies.

"One of the main reasons that the cruise market is changing so rapidly," says Bob Levinstein, CruiseCompete's CEO, "is the wealth of knowledge available on these three web sites." Highly-educated consumers save travel agents significant time. This in turn allows the agents to offer greater discounts--ideal for the CruiseCompete service, where price is of paramount importance.

CruiseCompete.com lets travelers research and select a specific cruise ship and sail date, then receive quotes from multiple, independent travel agencies to get the lowest price. Free and anonymous, the site then allows the traveler to contact the best-priced agencies directly for further information or to book the trip.

"Where a travel agent can give you information about a particular ship or cabin category," says Levinstein, "I've seen post asking about a specific cabin with several responses from people who have sailed in that exact room."

The partnerships with CruiseCompete are structured as affiliate relationships: the content sites provide links to CruiseCompete, and then share revenues on each booking.

"Educated cruisers are connected with agents who understand their value," says Levinstein. "The consumer saves time and money; the sites provide more valuable service and generate revenue; and the agents are able to increase their sales volumes while investing less time. Everybody wins."

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CruiseCompete.com is operated by CruiseCompete, LLC, an independent company with offices in Des Moines, IA and Farmington, MI. Since it's September 15, 2003 launch, more than 20,000 cruisers have requested quotes from over 30 top rated, high-volume cruise agencies. CruiseCompete is not owned by or affiliated with any travel agency.

For more information www.CruiseCompete.com