Websites continue to attract new flight deals advertisers, newsletters attracting broad industry advertiser base, company builds management team for further US and international expansion
Cheapflights Ltd., the leading UK and North American internet media travel company, which pioneered online flight price search and comparison in 1996, enjoyed very strong growth in the first six months of 2007 on both sides of the Atlantic. The launch of Cheapflights' US site in May 2003 has helped power an increase in sales of 71% a year between 2004 and 2006. This excellent profitable growth pattern has continued and the first six months of 2007 indicate that Cheapflights can expect to continue with its rapid growth rate. The Company is also maintaining its high EBITDA margins as its online media model continues to benefit from the growth of online advertising.
Overview January - June 2007 Cheapflights.co.uk and the US site, Cheapflights.com, have again shown solid performances in traffic. In particular, Cheapflights.com, launched in May 2003, has seen hyper-growth with its traffic now matching that of Cheapflights.co.uk. Both sites have seen a record number of users over the past six months. In addition, the Company has continued to recruit management and senior staff to facilitate its planned international expansion and continued advance in the UK and North America. The focus has been on the strengthening of its technology teams.
Advertisers Continue to Sign Up Launched over 11 years ago, Cheapflights.co.uk still continues to attract new advertising partners at a rapid rate. In the UK, leading travel industry companies, including Expedia, Alitalia, Flyzoom.com, Travel Republic and Travelbag have recently joined Cheapflights' extensive list of existing advertisers on its flights search and comparison sites. The latter include such well known brands as BA, Virgin Atlantic and Expedia, a long term US site advertising partner. As well as these household brands, other travel specialists including Malev, LOT Polish, Ocean Florida, Balkan Holidays and Wise Miser have become Cheapflights advertising partners.
Apart from flight deals advertisers, the Company is also seeing huge interest from other travel-related companies in advertising on its weekly opt-in subscriber newsletters. Originally launched as a "non-commercial" venture to promote the Cheapflights brand name, Cheapflights newsletters have become very much a commercial success in their own right. Global opt-in newsletter subscribers now stand at over 4 million. New advertisers include tourist boards, hotels, the cruise sector as well as specialist holiday agents. These include: the Netherlands Travel Board, Pure Espana, SAS and Warner Breaks and specialist travel agencies such as Corsican Places, Anatolian Sky Holidays and Nita International.
Record Traffic In the year to end June 2007, Cheapflights recorded 56 million visitors (unique users) globally according to company log files. Unique user traffic for the full month of June was 5.2 million globally, equally split between the UK and USA sites.
Market Share Leading Commercial Positioning Cheapflights continues to perform well in the Hitwise UK Travel-Agencies sector, whilst in the US market share was dramatically up:
.Nielsen/NetRatings show Cheapflights as the UK�s leading travel price comparison site in June traffic.
.In June Cheapflights, according to Hitwise, was the fifth largest search engine provider of visits to the Travel - Agencies sector after Google, Yahoo, MSN and Ask.com UK and third search engine provider to the Aviation - Commercial Airlines sector after Google and Yahoo - Search UK.
.Over the past five years, Cheapflights.co.uk has been the only travel flight price comparison site consistently to feature in the Hitwise UK Quarterly Top 10 Travel Agencies rankings. (Source: Hitwise).
.Cheapflights.co.uk ranked at 8 in the top 10 out of 2032 sites rated by Hitwise in their Travel - Agencies sector traffic ratings for the month of June, 2007.
.The �Cheapflights.co.uk� website also experienced a rise of 7 places in the Hitwise All Sites rankings during June, 2007 to become the 217th most visited UK website for Internet users out of 441,000 UK sites.
Management Team The first half was marked not only by excellent commercial progress, but also by considerable strengthening of the management teams on both sides of the Atlantic. In the past six months, the Company has been able to attract further high calibre management and staff both in the UK and in the USA. They will strengthen and assist Cheapflights' talented team to drive the Company's next phase of growth and planned internationalisation.
Apart from Joseph Sikorsky, Head of UK Marketing and Ex-British Airways Head of Digital recruited in early December 2006, notable appointments over the past six months in chronological order have been:
.Chris Martin, Chief Technology Officer - ex- CTO of eBuyer. Previously, he led Production and Development for search engine AskJeeves.com in Europe. Ask had operations in six European countries.
.Francesca Ecsery, General Manager (UK) - ex- Managing Director STA Travel International Division.
.Dr Brian Fitzgerald, Global Analytics Manager, ex Product Manager for Search Reporting at IAC Search and Media (Ask.com).
Travel/Internet Accolades Another significant achievement has been the fact that Cheapflights has been awarded thirteen internet or travel accolades in 2006-2007. The most recent is the National Business Awards S.E. Region where Cheapflights won the 3i's Growth Strategy of the Year Award 2007 and was a finalist in the Business Innovation of the Year Award 2007. The awards are open to companies from all business sectors in the South-East, one of the most competitive, dynamic and innovative business regions in Europe. To be a finalist, let alone winner is a tribute to the whole Cheapflights' team particularly as the Company won the Growth Strategy Award in 2004. This demonstrates a consistently successful approach to building the company without recourse to M & A activity or external funding. Other accolades in the past six months include:
.Cheapflights is named as one of The Independent�s top 50 travel websites.
.Cheapflights UK site is a Hitwise Top 10 Award winner for the quarter ending April-June (2007).
.Cheapflights has been ranked in the top ten in the Hitwise Travel - Agencies category for the past 19 quarters.
.Cheapflights.co.uk wins the Wildcard Category of the Imperatives Digital Awards. The website was rated for its easy-to-understand travel results, helpful advice and blog site, Cheap Flights News.
.Cheapflights UK is included in the Media Momentum UK's Top 50 Fastest Growing Digital Media Companies 2007 for the third consecutive year.
.Nominated as finalist in Travolution Magazine Travel Awards 'Best Price Comparison' website.
Commenting Group Managing Director Chris Cuddy said:
"The first six months this year have confirmed our expectations of significant US growth. Our North American growth will be further accelerated by the launch in April of our Canadian site Cheapflights.ca. According to a just released study by industry analysts PhocusWright, Canada's online travel market is booming and is expected to nearly quadruple between 2004 and 2009. The study confirms that almost one third of all travel in Canada this year will be booked online for leisure and unmanaged business."
David Soskin, Cheapflights CEO, added:
"Cheapflights' success is grounded on having the right management to maintain our momentum in staying at the leading edge of available technology and to drive our growth exponentially. We have been fortunate in building a team capable of doing this and to have recently attracted further talent that will help us achieve our goal of becoming a global brand. The next six months will be a very exciting time for the group with considerable effort focussed on new products and upgraded infrastructure for our sites."
-Ends-
Notes to Editors - Cheapflights Ltd. www.cheapflights.co.uk:Founded in 1996 and profitable since launch, Cheapflights is the UK�s leading UK flight price comparison website and pioneered the travel price comparison model on the Internet. It also introduced the pay-per-click business model to the UK in 2000.
Cheapflights is one of the few British internet companies successfully to establish an operation in the USA (www.cheapflights.com). Launched in May 2003, and currently with 2.6 million unique users a month, Cheapflights.com is already in the top 13 US travel sites (Hitwise US).
In April 2007, Cheapflights launched in Canada (www.cheapflights.ca). Cheapflights does not sell any flight deals or travel products. Each day, it sorts millions of flight prices from hundreds of travel partners worldwide. It then publishes a filtered current list of the best deals. 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 online publishers of flight deals available. It also has well established opt-in subscription weekly newsletters on both sides of the Atlantic with over 4 million subscribers. The Company has launched UK and USA "Flight News" blog sites, http://news.cheapflights.co.uk; and http://news.cheapflights.com. These have become major interactive communities to inform and assist travel consumers on both sides of the Atlantic. Hitwise's statistics show Cheapflights as being in the UK's top 10 vertical search and price comparison sites in their Travel - Agencies sector for the past 19 quarters. Cheapflights now accounts for just under 1% of all UK PPC advertising and 3.2% of all UK online travel display adverts according to 2006 IAB figures. The Company's unique user numbers reached almost 6 million globally in January 2007. Cheapflights estimates that it generated travel product sales of over US$1.8 billion for its advertising partners in 2006. These advertisers read like a Who�s Who of the travel world - ranging from British Airways, Thomson, Expedia, Travelocity, TUI and Thomas Cook. Cheapflights' newsletter advertisers include specialists like the Netherlands Travel Board, Pure Espana, SAS and Warner Breaks and specialist travel agencies such as Corsican Places, Anatolian Sky Holidays and Nita International.
In January 2007 Cheapflights invested in the Icelandic global flights planner, dohop ltd (www.dohop.com) and is represented on the dohop.com Board. The dohop.com free website enables travellers to research available flight routes and scheduled departures and arrivals worldwide and operates as a separate business to Cheapflights. It facilitates journey planning and is particularly helpful for finding unusual flight connections.
Cheapflights' status as an independent 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 from a neutral source on both sides of the Atlantic.
For further information please contact:
Petrina Bonnington-Evans, Rooster Tel: 020 7953 8774 Email: petrina.bonnington-evans@rooster.co.uk
Cass Helstrip Tel: 020 7953 8774 Email: cass.helstrip@rooster.co.uk