Cheapflights.co.uk, the internet's No.1 guide to travel deals in the U.K. and Ireland, announced today that it has expanded into the US travel market, with launch of its new US website www.Cheapflights.com. Based in Boston, Cheapflights.com will be headed by Cheapflights' COO Hugo Burge, who has been appointed President, Cheapflights (USA) Inc.
Key advertising partners on the new US .com site - who provide their latest travel deal information - include Travelocity.com; British Airways; JetBlue; Travelnow.com (a top 10 US travel site); Cheap Seats Travel; One Travel and Discountfares. The US site has been launched with an initial 400 destinations, 200 departure points and a current total of 100,000 deals.
www.cheapflights.co.uk has been a huge success in the UK where it has been consistently profitable since its launch in 1996. It continues to grow in sales and broaden its consumer offering despite difficult market conditions since the beginning of the year. In April the UK site was totally revamped. The recent acquisition of Applefares.com, with its "ethical" spidering technology, has allowed the company to begin its international roll-out.
Cheapflights.co.uk currently has over 500 travel advertisers on the site, and generates an estimated £300 million worth of travel product sales through these partners. The most recent external audit of site traffic saw 1.33 million unique users on the site and the company is looking to repeat their UK success in the US.
David Soskin, CEO of Cheapflights commented:
" The USA is the largest Internet travel market in the world and we have seven years experience and success behind us to bring and apply to this exciting market. We believe that our ethical spidering software is particularly useful in the US given the size and diversity of the market. The software will furnish our site with the ability to drive real time search and retrieval of deal data from a potentially very large number of US advertising partner websites. This will ensure that partners are relieved of the problem of manually downloading their current best deals and passing to Cheapflights for inclusion. Consumers benefit too because they are presented with a very fresh snapshot of the prices available."
Hugo Burge, President of Cheapflights (USA) Inc. added:
"We are very excited about the prospect of being the first leading UK travel website to venture into the US market. A lot of US travel sites have come to the UK. However, we are confident that the successful formula that has made Cheapflights.co.uk the No. 1 guide to travel deals in the UK will work equally well in the US. A number of UK departure advertising partners, who consider Cheapflights to be an essential marketing tool, have been pressing Cheapflights for an equivalent Cheapflights site in the US. Encouragingly, Cheapflights is also already being welcomed by the US travel industry to help generate demand as the market emerges from a difficult time.
Our business model is exceptionally scalable and this bold step into the world's largest Internet market is our first move in plans for an ambitious international roll out."
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Notes to Editors:
Cheapflights.co.uk has over 500 UK travel industry advertising "partners" with 600,000 daily updated bargains.
Cheapflights is now a top UK travel site with an audited (ABCe) 1.33million unique users in January 2003.
In a recent Q1 2003 survey by Nielsens//NetRatings, Cheapflights was the fourth largest UK travel site behind Lastminute.com, Expedia and Opodo, all of whom are advertising partners with Cheapflights.
Cheapflights pioneered travel on the Internet in 1996 and is the only leading UK travel website that is privately-owned and consistently profitable.
