Breaking Travel News

CheapTickets Strengthens Market Presence


A recently re-launched CheapTickets.com

is making solid gains in the competitive online travel arena, indicated most
recently by market-leading, year-over-year growth in unique monthly
visitor traffic. 
Caption: Evans Gebhardt, chief marketing
officer
of Trip Network, Inc.

In February, Cheap Tickets welcomed nearly 6 million unique visitors, a year-over-year increase of 123 percent, growth nearly twice as
high as the nearest online competitor, according to comScore.


In November 2002, Cheap Tickets released a new version of its Web site
built
on the Trip Network platform utilizing the Galileo global distribution
system. Since that time, Cheap Tickets has been gaining traction and
maintaining record levels in visitor traffic, gross bookings and
transactions each month. As evidence of the continuing climb, the site`s
February gross bookings and transactions were up year-over-year in the
triple digits - nearly twice as much as its record monthly visitor
increase.

“We have rebuilt a site around a brand that`s attracting new customers and
seeing more of them purchase,” said Evans Gebhardt, chief marketing
officer
of Trip Network, Inc., which operates the online businesses of Cheap
Tickets
and Trip.com. “Even in this tough economy and industry climate, Cheap
Tickets is competing quite effectively with the major players in the
field.”


The new Cheap Tickets site features more discounted inventory including
Lodging.com`s hotel inventory; the implementation of new faring
technology,
significantly enhancing the results of air searches; last-minute vacation
packages; new features like destination guides and travel tools; and a
greatly simplified navigation.

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“While the travel industry remains challenged by world events, it is a
resilient industry and demand will eventually rebound strongly in favor of
online travel,” Gebhardt added. “We`ve built a site that will withstand
market pressures over the long term, and we plan to continue investing in
our new Cheap Tickets site to increase our online momentum and emerge a
true
contender in this highly competitive space.”

Related stories on ITN:

(05/01/2003) Seamless Car Bookings On Cheaptickets.com

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