Cheapflights.co.uk, the No 1 Guide to flight and travel deals in the U.K. and Ireland, has launched Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk. The new site is a unique one-stop online guide that helps consumers to search for their holiday from some 200,000 offers from more than 120 travel companies. The trend for online holiday booking is increasing in Europe as evidenced by recent research by international communications consultants GartnerG2.
The complexity and size of the holiday market and the number of travel companies offering packaged holiday and short-break deals options is vast. In addition holiday offers encompass many different travel options (e.g. flight; ferry & rail) and activity options (e.g. painting; walking; sailing etc.) as well as destination and pricing options. Travel companies range from the not always easily-found small specialty travel company offering niche adventure/activity holidays through to the mainstream package holiday operators as well as cruise companies.
This range of choice means that there is an unmet need for a fast, easily navigated site, containing offers from a large number of travel companies where consumers can easily identify offers for their preferred type of holiday (and means of travel). Cheapholidaydeals brings together this wide choice of holidays and provides consumers with a fast search capability on one web site. For the popular resorts, three clicks of the mouse is usually all that’s needed to bring up a large selection of offers – with there being a large number of operators, its sometimes even possible to find the same holiday deal on offer at different prices – something not possible with individual holiday operator sites.
The Cheapholidaydeals site therefore enables viewers to very easily establish the availability and cost for current offers of their preferred holiday type, destination, departure point, date availability and accommodation. Once decided it's just one further click or a telephone call to book the holiday with the travel company making the offer. The alternative would be to trawl through print and analogue broadcast media or though the myriad of individual web-sites offering holiday deals, a process which could possibly take many hours of web-surfing and/or reading through print media.
A very large percentage of the major travel companies, as well as smaller specialist operators, are long-standing advertising partners of Cheapflights. Encouraged by the success of trialing holidays and short breaks on the Cheapflights.co.uk original site, holiday companies are now working direct with Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk to promote their offers. The successful Cheapflights formula launched in 1996 has been mirrored across this new site.
“Advertisers on Cheapflights.co.uk reported pleasing sales conversions which confirmed our thoughts that this is an un-tapped area of travel on the Internet” reports David Soskin CEO of Cheapflights Ltd. “Users are able to quickly compare prices for their preferred destination or holiday type in one place before clicking through or telephoning the advertiser direct. David Soskin continues: "The package holiday market in the UK is similar in size to the far less complex flights market. Its complexity is due to the vast range of holiday types and travel methods a consumer can choose from. Hence, Cheapholidaydeals has been specifically created to deal with any type of holiday product. We believe that as growth in consumer use of the Internet continues as a preferred method of choosing and booking a holiday, that Cheapholidaydeals will greatly assist consumers in making their holiday choice. In turn this will benefit our advertising partners as we drive high quality leads and business to them. We do not believe that holiday companies are best served either by traditional print media or by analogue television as cost effective media to promote and sell holiday deals."
Vic Darvey, Group Sales Director of OTC added: "Online booking is now an established and growing feature of the holiday market scene. Consumers have a bewildering range of choice and we welcome Cheapholidaydeals as a means of enabling customers to find a holiday that meets their expectations and budget. Cheapholidaydeals has already proven to be a great source of high quality leads with an extremely encouraging 'look to book' ratio."
Kathryn Ng, Marketing Executive of Ski McNeill said: "As a niche holiday operator, the ability to put our specialist holidays on a site that makes them easily found and available to our target market is a huge and cost-effective benefit to us and a convenient and useful service to our customers”.
Notes to editors: Cheapflights pioneered internet travel in the UK in 1996. Cheapflights does not sell flights, or holidays, but provides an online guide to the best travel deals from across the travel industry and was the first web site to introduce 'pay-per-click' revenue generating model into the UK. Depending on seasonal variances the combined sites receive between 1.5 and 2 million unique users a month The company conservatively estimates that use of the site by consumers has led to travel product sales of over £315 million a year by the UK travel industry advertisers on the sites. Cheapflights’ mission is to be the No.1 guide to travel deals within each travel sector they address. In addition to Cheapflights.co.uk and Cheapflights.com, Cheapflights Ltd owns a number of travel websites in different international markets including Cheapaccommodation.com, the global accommodation website. They have recently purchased Cheapestflights.com from MyTravel USA and will use the site to educate consumers that no single site can currently provide the “cheapest” flight fares.
