Cheapflights, the international leader in flights price comparison, with sites in the UK and USA beta launched its Canadian site (www.cheapflights.ca) ("CFCA") in April last year. The Company is pleased to announce the appointment of Lorraine Jackson as Senior Business Development Manager for the Canadian site. Based in Toronto, Lorraine will report to Cheapflights' Head of International, Mo Bulbrook. She will take on the responsibility of building a stronger relationship with our advertising partners and bring new travel partners onto the CFCA site.
Lorraine has in-depth experience in the Canadian travel market place and has worked for travel companies, American Airlines, Sabre Travel Network and for the past several years at Worldspan (now Travelport Inc) as the Canada Manager & Market Development Strategist for their Travel Distribution Solutions.
Canada is a natural market for Cheapflights into which to expand. It enjoys both high internet penetration - more than 19 million users and a proliferation of broadband access - some 59 per cent of the population*. In addition, the web is the preferred means of researching travel** and the second most popular type of online purchase after books and magazines***. The market is ideal for the Cheapflights product because of price competition caused by many players including travel agents, consolidators, tour operators as well as scheduled, charter and low-cost airlines and the "long-tail" of small and specialist agencies.
The rapid price changes in seat pricing due to the current world economic conditions, competition to fill capacity and seasonal variations mean that consumers can be confused as to where to look for the best available fares. Cheapflights sources its deals daily not only from airlines and budget carriers, but also from aggregators, online travel agencies and meta-search sites whose names read like a Who’s Who of the travel industry. Those already on the Canadian site include WestJet, Expedia, Travelocity, BA, Redtag Vacations, Ticketpilot and flightnetwork.
Cheapflights' Head of International, Mo Bulbrook commented: "Lorraine's presence will be a huge step forward for the Canadian site and I look forward to working with her."
"With our successful growth in the USA, as well as in the UK, we see Canada as a natural extension of our North American presence. We have been most encouraged to see our existing partners embrace our international ambitions and work with us in Canada. Furthermore the Canadian site is achieving well over 200,000 visits monthly in its ‘beta’ configuration. We expect to fully launch Cheapflights.ca in the near future as part of our global expansion strategy. The site will benefit from the huge content capacity and functionality of Cheapflights' new international technology platform which are already underpinning our US and UK sites relaunched this year."
- Ends -
Sources:
* eMarketer
** GMI – global market research company
*** CTC Tourism Intelligence
Contacts:
Cheapflights Ltd: London.
John Barrington-Carver; Corporate PR
Tel: +44 (0) 7831 655 630; e-mail: corporate-pr@cheapflights.com
Cheapflights, Canada
Lorraine Jackson, Senior Business Development Manager, Canada
Tel: +1 905 434 1372; Cell: 905-259-1061
e-mail: Lorraine.jackson@cheapflights.com
Notes to Editors:
CheapflightsLtd.: www.cheapflights.co.uk was launched in 1996. It pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison and has been consistently profitable since launch. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000, which helped to transform online advertising. Cheapflights publishes flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers. It launched its US site www.cheapflights.com in May 2003, which has grown rapidly and which now provides half of Cheapflights' millions of monthly visits by consumers. Its Canadian site www.cheapflights.ca which was "beta" launched in April 2007 is already enjoying traffic of more than 200,000 monthly visits. Cheapflights’ US and UK sites each provide consumers with rapid, easy-to-use comparisons of about one million flight deals daily from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The site is valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site, together with its free opt-in subscriber newsletters makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information on both sides of the Atlantic.
