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The site offers on-line flight and hotel booking services from over 480 airlines and 54,000 hotels as well as car rental and travel insurance.
"Opodo aims to be a low cost distribution channel with the objective of providing consumers with choice and low fares," said Giovannni Bisignani, chief executive officer of the company.
The venture has already received EUR128 million for 2001 and will spend STG30 million on marketing the new portal.
"Europe has for some time lagged behind the US for on-line travel bookings and we believe that Europe is about to witness an explosion in demand for on-line travel services surpassing US growth by as early as 2004," said Bisignani.
Opodo is aimed only at the European market and the company said that European on-line travel sales will overtake those in the US by 2003.
Opodo has been set up as independent travel business by the joint venture partners who include Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Aer Lingus and Lufthansa.
The service which will be headquartered in London will employ around 100 people.
The company plans to establish customer support call centres that will operate 24 hours a day and seven days a week in all major European languages. Vincent Bourke, operations director with Opodo told ElectricNews.Net that Ireland had been short listed as a possible location for a call centre.
The service will be launched in Germany first in December followed by the UK, France and Italy in the summer of 2002.
Later that year the service will open in Holland, Sweden and Spain followed by Ireland, Finland and Austria in 2003.
However the company said it would consider launching its Irish site along with the UK launch if its research indicated that the Irish people would be receptive to a dual UK and Ireland Web site.
European on-line travel currently worth EUR6.1 billion and estimated to grow to EUR40.9 billion by 2005 according to research by Forrester research.
The company said it is looking to provide a more comprehensive travel service for Europeans with guides, interactive maps and travel brands tailored to each country.
Air France, British Airways and Lufthansa will control the new venture with a 22.8 percent shareholding each. Aer Lingus hold only 1.1 percent of the new venture, with. Alitalia, Iberia and KLM will each hold 9.14 percent of the new company, and Austrian Airlines and Finnair will hold 1.1 percent, 1.7 percent respectively.
The company expects to be profitable in 2004.
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