Travel
The Travel vertical offers customers the opportunity to search for, and compare, travel products in 9 channels including:
- Flights
- Package holidays
- Car hire
- Hotels
During 2008, the Group continued to focus on innovation, resulting in a number of enhancements over the course of the year, each aimed at improving the customer experience. These included:
Website redesign - the Group commenced a major project to refresh the look and feel of travelsupermarket.com to make it more inspirational and to really excite customers about the prospect of travelling and holidaying. This was initially released to customers as an alternative or 'beta' version and will be fully live during 2009.
Trip Advisor - the Group worked closely with Expedia to integrate their customer reviews and ratings into the hotels channel, enabling customers to check the suitability of their hotel choice before booking it.
Virtual Earth - the Group worked closely with Microsoft to bring maps and geo-coding to the hotels channel. This allows customers to view their hotel choice on an interactive map in conjunction with other useful information such as the location of museums, attractions and public transport.
Brochure details - the Group integrated brochure information into the holidays channel allowing customers the opportunity to see a range of details about the holiday they are considering including photos, amenities and tour operator reviews.
- Revenue
- £19.1m (2007: £15.0m)
- Visitors
- 48.9m (2007: 37.0m)
Customer case study
Al Prior, 47, is a consultant for an engineering software company. He travels to Europe on business regularly and uses travelsupermarket.com to find flight and hotel deals.
Al said: "I use travelsupermarket.com a lot for business travel as I fly to Europe once every month or so. Because I have to be there at specific times for meetings, it's not only price that I'm comparing. I also need to know that I can get there at the right time and travelsupermarket.com is great because I can see everything - flight times and cost - in one go, rather than having to go to all the websites of airlines individually.
As well as flight searches, I also use the hotels channel regularly. I tend to stay in the same type of hotel, so if I'm going to a new place, I look for certain chains to see if they have a hotel that is conveniently located."