 Cheapflights has announced that
its UK and US sites reached a landmark 4 million a month unique users
during the month of January 2005.
The Company's landmark January 2005 monthly unique users figure represents
a 100% year on year growth in the three UK sites' traffic to 3 million
from 1.5 million last year. Although they have always enjoyed significant
50% plus growth, the UK sites have recently successfully accelerated their
growth rates. In the past five months, they have increased their total
monthly traffic from circa 2 million in August 2004 to the current 3
million1.
In the US, year on year monthly unique users in January 2005 rose by 150%
to 1 million2. This ranks it in the top 20 Hitwise US online Travel
Agencies sector sites. Launched into the enormous US travel market in May
2003, the US site has sprinted - in less than two years - to reach monthly
unique user levels which took Cheapflights.co.uk six years to achieve.
This has justified the Company's decision to introduce its successful
online travel search and price comparison and pay per click business model
to the US. This US success story has rapidly established another profit
centre for the Company.
In January 2005, Hitwise UK, the independent website traffic monitor,
ranked all three Cheapflights's sites (Cheapflights.co.uk,
Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk and Cheapaccommodation.com) in the top 100 of its
7,434 website strong Travel Sector. This Sector comprises all travel
related sites and includes airlines, rail sites, map sites, hotels and
destination guides. The Cheapflights sites' ranking in the sector
represents a share of over 1% of a segment which accounted in January for
4.91% of all UK web usage.
According to Hitwise, Cheapflights.co.uk enjoys the highest book-mark
percentage in the top twenty rankings in the Travel Sector.
Regularly over the past year, Hitwise UK has rated Cheapflights.co.uk in
the top 10 of the Travel Agencies Sector's 1383 sites. This January,
Cheapholidaydeals.co.uk reached 31 in the same sector only 12 months after
launch. Cheapaccommodation.com ranked 22 in January in Hitwise UK's 3891
strong Travel-Accommodation & Destinations Sector fourteen months after it
was launched.
In January 2005, Cheapflights maintained its position as the pre-eminent
travel price comparison site in the UK. According to Hitwise UK data, it
was the fourth largest referrer of leads to BA.com and Lastminute.com, the
third to Ebookers and the largest to other leading travel companies such
as Airline Network and Online Travel Company1. This actually under
represents Cheapflights's importance to the sector since Hitwise does not
monitor telephone referrals made as a result of leads derived from
Cheapflights.
Commenting, David Soskin, Chief Executive of Cheapflights Ltd. said: "We
are delighted with the 150% US traffic growth in 2004, especially as we
have only spent US$100,000 on marketing over there, a relatively small
marketing spend by online travel standards. According to data from the
European Travel Commission, 68 million American unique users used online
travel websites in November 2004 . To attract one million of these users
to our relatively new US site is no mean achievement and testifies to the
fact that our sites provide the travel content, easy access, navigability
and speed that users on both sides of the Atlantic want.
We are also very pleased that our UK traffic is also rapidly increasing.
We calculate that an estimated half a billion pounds sterling of flights
and holiday travel business was referred by Cheapflights to the UK travel
sector in 2004."
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