Cheapflights Ltd., the award-winning and profitable pioneer of independent online travel search and price comparison, announces that it achieved a record 5.25 million unique users in January 2006.
Year on year, its January 2006 traffic grew by 31.25%. Cheapflights is the UK's leading independent international internet travel deal search and comparison company and has become a major, and growing, sector player in the USA.
HIGHLIGHTS JANUARY 2005-2006
5.25 million monthly unique users site traffic in January 2006*
Unique User growth up overall by nearly a third with strong USA traffic growth
Hitwise, the independent website traffic monitor, ranked Cheapflights in the top 20 out of 7,067 website in the UK Travel Sector**. (This sector comprises all travel related sites and includes airlines, rail sites, map sites, hotels and destination guides.)
Cheapflights’ ranking represents 0.75% of this segment which in turn accounted in for 5.6% of all UK web usage in January.
USA site now ranked 14 by traffic in its relevant Hitwise sector
According to Hitwise UK, Cheapflights was the top travel aggregator site sending traffic to Travel Agencies websites in January 2006, beaten only by Google and MSN
Largest online referrer to Onlinetravel.com
Second largest online referrer to lastminute.com, ebookers, Airline Network after Google
Third largest online referrer according to Hitwise UK data, to BA.com after Google and MSN
Traffic has grown 15x since current management took over in 2000, achieved without traditional above the line advertising spend.
First consumer-facing dotcom to launch travel news blog sites creating basis for significant on line travel communities on both sides of the Atlantic.
An estimated £1 Billion worth of travel sales driven by Cheapflights to its travel advertising 'partners' in 2005 through high conversion rates of leads.
The Company achieved a number of awards including the London Business Awards Innovation Company of the Year 2005 and the .net Magazine 2005 Website of the Year (travel). Cheapflights also ranked as a Sunday Times Microsoft 100 Tech Track company both in 2004 and 2005.
Senior management recruited in Boston and in London to prepare for second decade of growth and overseas expansion.
Founded in 1996, Cheapflights was the first independent online price search and comparison portal for travel deals. It pioneered the Travel Search Engine (TSE) concept by publishing flight prices advertised on its site by airlines and other travel operators. Travel is a dynamic and constantly changing market with price competition presenting consumers with a bewildering set of choices. These are best viewed and compared on an easily navigated and neutral website with the broadest possible selection of deals – namely Cheapflights.co.uk.
After ten years of consistently strong growth, Cheapflights, which is independent and privately-held, will maintain its strategy as an online media company providing consumers with the best tools to find and compare prices from a huge choice of travel deals.
Following a management buy-in led by David Soskin and Hugo Burge in early 2000, it was also the first travel site to introduce pay-per-click (PPC) for advertisers. Cheapflights supplies travel industry advertisers - whose names read like a Who's Who of the industry - with qualified leads and enables them cost-effectively to present their best deals to the growing online market place.
According to recent research by Merrill Lynch, by the end of 2007 internet sales of travel are set to grow by 39%. Point Topic research found that broadband adoption in the UK grew by 3 million subscribers to 9.8 million in 2005 and that USA Broadband connections now stand at 40.9 million. In addition, a recent report by Thomson Intermedia and KPMG has found that online advertising by the UK travel industry now accounts for 9% of total UK online advertising.
Commenting, David Soskin, Chief Executive of Cheapflights Ltd. said:
"We are delighted with the powerful traffic growth we achieved in 2005. Growth in the USA has been particularly encouraging, especially as we have only spent minimal sums on off-line advertising.
Three strong trends are helping to drive our growth. First, more and more people are building holidays for themselves around their flights. According to the CAA's latest report, there is continuing strong UK growth in leisure air bookings, principally direct with airlines. Second, the take-up of broadband is continuing apace. Third, the international trend towards online booking is increasing sharply.
All this implies a fast-growing market for our existing and planned products as well as continuing organic growth at Cheapflights.
* Source: Company log files. About 10% of Cheapflights UK traffic and about 10% of Cheapflights USA traffic goes on to visit the sister site.
**Travel agencies and businesses which provide planning and organisational services for holiday and travel.
Notes to Editors:
Cheapflights Ltd.
Founded in 1996 and profitable since launch, Cheapflights.co.uk pioneered the travel price comparison model in the UK and introduced pay-per-click in the UK in 2000.
Cheapflights does not sell any travel products Each day, it displays over one million constantly updated prices supplied by hundreds of travel partners worldwide. These deals can be accessed online or by telephone direct with the advertiser from links or information on our site. This makes Cheapflights one of the most comprehensive independent publishers online of flight and other travel deals available
Leading online measurement company Hitwise has described Cheapflights as ‘the UK’s favourite travel price comparison site’; and the Company's unique user numbers, as well as those from the USA, support this, having reached 5,250,000 unique users in January 2005.
Cheapflights estimates that it generated travel product sales of over £1 billion for its advertising partners in 2005. These advertisers read like a Who’s Who of the travel world - ranging from British Airways, Thomson, Expedia, Travelocity and Thomas Cook to specialist operators like STA Travel , Llama Travel and Iglu.com.
Cheapflights is one of the few British internet companies successfully to establish an operation in the USA with Cheapflights.com. Launched in May 2003, it is already in the top 14 USA travel sites. The Company. has also recently launched UK and USA "Flight News" blog sites with a view to these becoming major interactive communities to inform and assist travel consumers.
Cheapflights' independent status as an online travel price search and comparison and travel news site makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information.
