November 10 , 2009

Cheapflights.ca traffic up 2.6 million this year
Offers benefits to advertising partners

Cheapflights, the global leader in flights price search and comparison, is pleased to report that its Canadian site, Cheapflights.ca continues to grow traffic this year.  Cheapflights.ca has seen solid growth during 2009 with 4.0 million visits to the website to date this year (as at end of October). This is well up on the 2.6 million visits the site achieved in the whole of 2008.

Cheapflights does not sell air tickets, it publishes one of the largest selection of deals available online from major and low-cost airlines, aggregators, travel operators and small specialist or main street travel agencies some of whom have no online presence.  It pioneered the concept of flight price search and comparison in the UK in 1996 and now has an international presence enjoying over 78 million visits last year and driving sales of US$1.8 billion to its advertisers.

Cheapflights.ca was “light launched” with a basic multi-partner search by date tool and hand-picked deals service in April 2007.  This was followed in January 2009 by the addition of deals pages and increased content.  Despite, or perhaps because of, the global recession in the last and first quarters of 2008 and 2009 respectively, Cheapflights.ca’s deals pages have clearly been of growing interest to Canadian consumers looking for great value for money flight deals and travel intelligence. 

“We are naturally pleased with the site’s growth, it has also been attracting quality advertisers and we now have more than 20 advertising partners,” says Mo Bulbrook, Cheapflights’ Head of International Development.  “These include some of the top players in the online and offline travel industry in Canada as well as many smaller companies.”

Well known partners include:  Expedia.ca, Tripcentral, Flight Network, iTravel2000, JetSet Travel, WestJet, Flight Centre and Orbitz.

“We have just announced a re-design of our offer pages as part of our ongoing commitment to better meet the needs of both our Canadian users and our advertising partners,” she says. “We believe that the new design and features will make it easier for users to track down great deals and will allow advertising partners to share more deals and more information with users.   For example, charter airlines can now display their deals in a simple, interactive calendar view that aggregates their best deals by date.  Other airlines can use the new expandable lists to showcase additional deals without the user having to leave the page.”

Early results from both user and advertiser feedback suggest that the new offer pages are adding great value by making it easier to search for the best deals.