Southwest Airlines Launches Online Travel Guide

Share Your Travel Stories at New Online Travel Community

DALLAS, March 18 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Have you ever wanted to brag to someone about a wonderful vacation you had or share an idea on a great place for a business dinner? Now, there’s a place for it! Meet Southwest Airlines’ new online travel community - Travel Guide! This multi-faceted, Customer-friendly enhancement will provide a variety of benefits to assist Customers in making travel plans. Travel Guide users can share their own experiences and check out ratings, reviews, photos, and videos posted by fellow travelers of destinations, hotels, restaurants, and activities they recommend. Check it out by visiting http://www.southwest.com/travelguide.

“Fourteen years ago this week, we revolutionized the industry by launching southwest.com (iflyswa.com in those days). The addition of Travel Guide to southwest.com shows that we are continually evolving, and it is also a fun way to get Customers more involved in the site,� said Kevin Krone, Southwest Airlines Vice President Marketing, Sales, and Distribution.

Travel Guide offers Customers insights, tips, and unbiased opinions from a vast network of other travelers within a friendly and relaxed community built on unscripted traveler dialogue. Customers can utilize the site for pre-trip planning, or as an outlet to share travel knowledge by posting photos, videos, ratings, and written reviews either during or after their trip. The Guide also includes some hints and tips from the best travel experts we know—our own Southwest Airlines’ Employees!

Customers can create their own Travel Guide profile and search for information on their favorite vacation spots by desired destination, activity, or theme. Each destination page features a city bio, a seven-day weather forecast, information on local hotels, shopping, nightlife and restaurants, airport information, and driving directions to local attractions. Not only does Travel Guide offer information on cities that Southwest serves, it features surrounding destinations as well. You can access Travel Guide from the main navigation on southwest.com.

As a way to celebrate the launch of this exciting enhancement, Southwest is offering an added incentive to Customers who create a Travel Guide account and submit content to the site. Now through April 16, 2009, any approved photo, video, or post contributed to the site will earn Travel Guide users a one-time chance to win a vacation package to Chicago, Fort Myers, New Orleans, or Seattle. Check out Travel Guide today, and be sure to share a tip or two with your fellow travelers during your visit!

After nearly 38 years of service, Southwest Airlines continues to differentiate itself from other low fare carriers—offering a reliable product with exemplary Customer Service. Southwest Airlines is the most productive airline in the sky and offers Customers a comfortable traveling experience. Southwest recently updated its gate areas and improved its boarding procedure to make flying Southwest convenient and simple. Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), the nation's largest carrier in terms of domestic passengers enplaned, currently serves 65 cities in 33 states. Based in Dallas, Southwest currently operates more than 3,200 flights a day and has more than 35,000 Employees systemwide.

www.southwest.com