LONDON, October 30, 2008 -- Cheapflights Ltd, the pioneer and international leader in independent flights price comparison, is expanding its reach and market position with the launch of a new site in Germany - www.cheapflug.de. The German site is based on Cheapflights' new common technology platform which successfully powers Cheapflights' UK and US Web sites. This approach enables Cheapflug.de to introduce new features rapidly beyond the initial version of the site launched this month.
Cheapflights selected Germany as its first continental European launch due to Germany's leading position in outbound tourism from Europe, its strong business economy, plus the positive encouragement from leading German flight providers. The Cheapflug.de site carries flight deals departing from Germany and from airports in Austria as well as those airports close to Germany's borders with neighbouring countries. Cheapflug.de is Cheapflights' first non-English language site and will initially be managed from London which is the Company's hub for European operations.
"The Germans and Brits are surprisingly alike: they love beaches and cheap flight deals! Despite the undoubted charms of both countries, the indifferent weather means everyone travels abroad regularly. Furthermore, Germans travel abroad more often than any other European nationality closely followed by Brits,” said Mo Bulbrook, Cheapflights Head of International. “Cheapflug.de will help our users in Germany find great deals and provide a terrific resource for researching travel information and finding inspirational holiday destinations."
Germany is clearly a natural market for Cheapflights to expand into:
o Its five main airports carried 131 million passengers in 2007 (Source: Airports International Council).
o In outbound tourism it was number one in Europe in 2007 with 75.9 millions trips (Source: European Travel Commission Report 2007-2008 : p. 28).
o Germany also enjoys both high Internet penetration - more than 50 million users, nearly 64% of the population (Source: www.internetworldstats.com – June,2008 ) and a proliferation of broadband access - some 24% per cent of the population at the end of 2007.
o Online, Germany remained the second largest travel market in Europe in 2007, accounting for 19% of the total European online travel market, according to the updated January 2008 study “Trends in European Internet Distribution – of Travel and Tourism Services” by Carl H. Marcussen Centre for Regional and Tourism Research.
"Germany is a significant step forward in Cheapflights' international expansion and is part of Cheapflights’ wider strategy to go global within the next five years,” said Cheapflights' CEO, Chris Cuddy. “Our newly redesigned technology platform enables Cheapflights to embark on this launch with minimal additional investment. We are most encouraged to see the extremely positive initial response from German users and our existing travel partners who embrace our international ambitions to develop multi-national business relationships."
While purchasing airfare online is a common occurrence in Germany, Cheapflights' search and comparison model brings added depth and new functionality in the market. Cheapflights unique model -- displaying deals from a broad selection of flight deal providers -- provides clear benefits to both users and the travel industry. Cheapflights has contractual agreements with all its industry advertisers, from major flight providers down to specialist agencies, many of whom have no web presence of their own.
The Cheapflights flights price search and comparison model and its opt-in subscriber newsletters have already proved a success with both consumers and travel operators on both sides of the Atlantic. Cheapflights Web sites garnered more than six million unique users per month last year driving an estimated US$4 billion in sales to Cheapflights' advertising partners globally.
About Cheapflights Ltd:
Cheapflights Ltd (www.cheapflights.co.uk) was launched in 1996. It pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison and has been consistently profitable since launch. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000, which helped to transform online advertising. Cheapflights does not sell tickets but publishes flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers. It launched its US site www.cheapflights.com in May 2003, which has rapidly grown and which now provides half of Cheapflights' millions of monthly visits by consumers. Its Canadian site www.cheapflights.ca which was "beta" launched in April 2007 is already enjoying traffic of over 200,000 monthly visits. Cheapflights UK and North American sites each provide consumers with rapid, easy to use comparisons of about 1 million flight deals daily from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The sites are valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site, together with its free opt-in subscriber newsletters makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information on both sides of the Atlantic.
