Cheapflights Ltd.
announces it has been ranked 96th in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 League. The London based company entered the Sunday Times’s prestigious listing as a result of its consistent growth and profitability since its inception in 1996.  Its sales figures from 2001 to 2003 demonstrated sales growth of 53.8%, which earned it its position in this year’s Tech Track 100.

The Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 is compiled by Fast Track, an Oxford-based research company that tracks Britain’s most dynamic unquoted companies. The annual listing provides a comprehensive league table of the fastest growing, UK-based unquoted technology companies, ranked by growth in sales, in this case between 2001 and 2003.

Cheapflights is independent and privately owned and is the only travel price comparison site to be in the Hitwise Travel Agency Site top 10 rankings.  It is the most comprehensive travel price comparison site in the UK with well over one million offers on its sites each day selected from more than a quarter of a billion offers provided over each month by its 700+ travel industry advertising ‘partners’.  Cheapflights has consistently grown its traffic and now has some 2 million unique users a month and according to Hitwise is the favourite travel price comparison site in the UK.  In 2003, Cheapflights accounted for 1% of all UK internet advertising and 15% of travel internet advertising (source IAB).  In 2004, an estimated £525 million of travel product will be sold by the UK travel industry via the Cheapflights websites.

David Soskin CEO of Cheapflights commented: “Whilst we are a consumer lead company, it is by constantly upgrading our technology which enables us to deliver a market leading product.  We are therefore delighted to be included in the Sunday Times Microsoft Tech Track 100 this year despite the slow down in the travel industry.  We have always enjoyed extremely solid growth which continued last year despite SARS , Iraq and the hottest summer for many years - all of which adversely affected travel.  We believe though that by offering our advertisers and the public the widest possible choice of product, ease of access and by constantly investing our profits into improving the user experience we will consistently achieve excellent growth rates in the future.”

Peter Walker Cheapflights CIO added: “We have made huge technology investments funded by our growth, and are pioneering the use of HP Blade & Microsoft .Net platforms,  it is fantastic to have this investment recognised via our inclusion in the Tech Track listing”
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