Cheapflights Ltd., parent company of leading price comparison websites, Cheapflights.co.uk, Cheapaccommodation.com and Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk, announced today that projected sales driven by its family of sites to its travel partners are expected to surpass £1 billion in 2005.
This £1 billion pound landmark figure includes sales generated by the American sister site Cheapflights.com for its US travel partners. The US sales form a significant contribution only 26 months after the US site's launch in May 2003. The prediction has been based on data, including feedback from advertising partners, outlining current conversion rates of 'click-throughs' from displayed prices to completed sales.
Underpinning this predicted figure is the fact that Cheapflights continues to be a major driver of traffic and leads to its travel partners' sites. In June Cheapflights.co.uk alone, without including its sister sites' additional traffic, was the fifth largest source of leads to the UK Travel-Agencies sector overall (source: Hitwise UK).
In June 2005, Hitwise ranked Cheapflights.co.uk between the 1st and 4th largest source of traffic generated individually for partners such as Online Travel Company, Airline Network, Ebookers, Excel Airways, KLM, Lastminute.com and British Airways. Other sites such as Opodo, Travelocity and Thomson Flights also received a significant percentage of leads from Cheapflights.
David Soskin , CEO of Cheapflights Ltd commented: “We are one of the cheapest and most productive sources of leads to the travel industry. We have a unique product that over four million unique users visit each month. It is no surprise then that Cheapflights is experiencing its fastest growth rate ever. This year, we are expecting comfortably to double sales.
“We continue to be the most frequently used travel comparison website in the country. Consumers turn to Cheapflights because no other travel comparison website can boast as extensive a list of deals from as wide a range of travel partners.”
About Cheapflights:
Cheapflights is the world’s largest independent online travel price comparison service, operating Cheapflights.co.uk, Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk, Cheapaccommodation.com, and Cheapflights.com in the USA.
The company invented travel price search-and-compare functionality on the internet in 1996 and introduced pay per click (PPC) to the UK in 2000. Today, Cheapflights’ users search through over one million travel bargains from over 700 ABTA and ATOL bonded travel companies, airlines and accommodation providers in the UK alone. These advertisers read like a Who’s Who of the travel world - ranging from British Airways, Thomson and Lastminute.com to specialist operators like Barwell Travel , Llama Travel and Iglu.com.
Another 200 plus clients advertise on our US and global accommodation sites. Users can click through to their chosen supplier's websites or telephone lines to book their chosen deal.
Leading online measurement company Hitwise describes Cheapflights.co.uk as ‘the UK’s favourite travel price comparison site’; and the Company’s unique user numbers, including the UK, support this, reaching 4,000,000 unique users in January 2005 (source: ABCe and Company Logfiles).
