Cheapflights has today announced the launch of Cheapshortbreaks.co.uk, a price comparison website for the booming short breaks market. The new site, which publishes more than 14,000 short breaks from 125 partners offering deals to 150 destinations, is the Company’s fifth travel site. The website covers city breaks, beach, countryside and mini-cruises. Users can search for deals from their local airport as the site features short breaks for up to five nights from more than 30 UK departure points as well as on Eurostar.

A short break holiday is defined as being from one to five nights and this market has grown on average by 88% each year since 1999 .  Last year over 83 million Britons took a short break holiday and the trend is likely to continue according to the European Trade Commission .  Cheapflights’ own research shows that 48% of its users intended to take a short break abroad and 27% in the UK within 12 months.  Access to the internet from home is growing, according to the Office of National Statistics (ONS), this year 55% of households in the UK (13.1 million) can now access the Internet from home.  The ONS also states that more than half of Internet users in the UK have bought travel, accommodation or holidays online.

David Soskin CEO of Cheapflights Ltd. Commented:  “Our advertisers on Cheapholidaydeals reported pleasing sales conversions not only of their package holiday offers but also of their short breaks. This confirmed our thoughts that due to changing demographics, short breaks are a significant opportunity for a new price search and comparison site. It was also an opportunity to position Cheapflights as a leading UK online publisher of short break deals from a wide selection of travel operators. The opportunity coincided with the arrival of Dave Owczarek, our new COO, whose calibre and experience in web hosting, application hosting, and site development services to businesses enabled the smooth launching of this important addition to Cheapflights Ltd.‘s family of sites.”

He added: “Given the complexity and size of the short break market and that the number of travel companies now offering short break deals is already large and growing, we believe that Cheapshortbreaks will greatly assist consumers in making their choice of short break. In turn, this will benefit our advertising partners as we consistently drive high quality leads and business to them.  Holiday companies are increasingly marketing online because the internet provides a cost effective alternative to traditional media to promote and sell holiday deals.  Indeed, we estimate this year that our sites will drive £1 billion of business to our travel advertising partners.”
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