Online specialist travel company IfYouTravel Ltd has closed £2m in second round of funding for expansion. Investors include Europatweb, the Internet investment arm of Groupe Arnault and Aspect Internet, who incubated the company and continue to provide technical services.
IfYouTravel operates Europe’s leading online specialist travel sites:

á ifyouski.com is the UK’s leading winter sports website. It welcomes up to 250,000 unique users per month and has sold over £4m worth of travel. It is also available in French, German and Danish;
á ifyoudive.com and ifyougolf.com launched earlier this year and are establishing themselves as market leaders;
á ifyouexplore.com is in beta test and will be launched in the next few weeks to address the adventure travel market. Revenues come from commissions on travel sales as well as advertising and sponsorship, and are growing at over 150% per annum.
“IfYouTravel has developed the best rich-media content for discerning, active travellers, and matched this with hundreds of thousands of travel deals. We distribute via our own websites and through partnerships with leading brands like Expedia, Thomas Cook, AOL, Excite and Lastminute. The new funds will be used mainly to market the existing services, but also to investigate new areas, such as cruises and villas,” said Francesca Ecsery-Merrens, Group Managing Director of IfYouTravel.
“In the past month online travel companies like Expedia and Travelocity have bucked the Internet doom and gloom by announcing operating profits. Online travel works and it is going to be huge. IfYouTravel has carved out a unique position - there is no other specialist provider who can do multiple specialist travel types in multiple languages through multiple distribution channels. Now we are focusing on increasing our yield per user to achieve profitability and consolidate our chosen travel segments,” said Michael Liebreich, Chairman.
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