Bass, the brewer and world's second largest hotel operator, yesterday predicted it would hit its $1bn (£630m) annual target for internet room booking revenues within four years.
Customers would benefit from cheaper beds as the owner of Holiday Inns, Inter-Continental and Crowne Plaza hotels, passed on some of the financial benefits from web-based booking, it claimed.
Eric Pearson, vice-president for e-commerce at Bass, said the company with 2,800 hotels with 450,000 rooms was already taking $12m a month of hotel bookings over the net. This figure represents nearly 3% of the company's global revenue and it is growing every day.
"We predict that within four to five years we will be doing $1bn of business over the web," said Mr Pearson. This would amount to nearly 12% of revenues.
Web bookings cut out travel agents' commissions and other transaction fees and are said to be able to reduce costs by up to 10%.
Bass sells most of its rooms on the internet via its own websites but also through Lastminute.com, the internet travel agency.
Last December Bass invested an estimated £5m in Lastminute, which has just been floated on the London stock market amid some controversy over its share price gyrations.
Bass has been using Lastminute to market "distressed rooms" at cut-price levels and also market higher ticket packages with hotels linked to other services such as theatre tickets and car rental deals.
Bass started selling via its own website in 1995 and now claims to have the most visited hotel websites in the world.
"We have 11m to 12m page hits a month from 1.9m visits. What we have is high volumes and high usability, " said Mr Pearson.
Meanwhile the battle to takeover Bass's brewing interests is hotting up with diminutive J. Boag & Son in Australia insisting it was in the running to buy the British business.
This year Bass has bought Southern Pacific Hotels and bought up the 90% stake it did not own in Bristol Hotels & Resorts of the US.
But while its hotel interests have grown its commitment to brewing activities has looked increasingly in doubt.
Yesterday a Bass spokesman insisted that no decision had been taken as to whether to keep and develop those interests, which include six British breweries said to be worth up to £2bn.
But Holland's Heineken has made public its interest in buying the Bass brewing empire, while yesterday Boag announced that it had hired Westdeutsche LB as its financial adviser for an offer.
Despite its small size, Boag chairman and chief executive Philip Adkins said its success in the competitive Australian beer market qualified it to compete for Bass.
Bass is nearly 100 times the value of Boag. Its chairman is a former US investment banker who has already tried but failed to buy New Zealand brewer Lion Nathan.
The share price for Bass ended the session up a modest 2p at 750p.
