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Opodo, the new on-line travel company backed in part by Aer Lingus, is due to launch in Germany next month amidst a difficult time for the travel industry.
The company is launching at a time when the travel industry is suffering following the events of 11 September and an overall economic malaise. A recent survey from NetValue said that travel Web sites based in France and Germany saw sharp declines in visitors throughout September. The monitoring company said that in France, visitors were down by 326,000 and in Germany they fell by 571,000 in that month.
But Opodo's chief executive officer, Giovanni Bisignani, said that the company's "low cost" infrastructure would enable it to provide a vehicle for airlines to fill seats. "Never before has the travel industry needed such a low-cost distribution vehicle," Bisignani said.
Bisignani claims that more than 126 million people are on-line across Europe, with travel and leisure accounting for 26 percent of the total e-commerce market. He goes on to say that forecasts of the market predict that travel sales will grow from EUR4.5 billion to as high as EUR38.7 billion by 2006.
The company's first site is due to launch in Germany next week at http:// www.opodo.de. That launch will be followed by the start of services from its UK site in the summer of 2002 along with France and Italy. Later in 2002, services are due to begin in Holland, Sweden and Spain followed by Ireland, Finland and Austria in 2003. Opodo expects to be profitable in 2004.
At the company's launch in June of this year, Vincent Bourke, operations director with Opodo told ElectricNews.Net that Ireland had been shortlisted as a possible location for a call centre. On Wednesday, a spokesperson for the company said that Ireland was still in the running although no decisions had been made. Already the company has established call centres in Berlin and Leicester to serve its German and UK business respectively.
The spokesperson said that one of the company's strengths will be its focus on the specific needs of each on the nations in which it operates. "The essence of Opodo is that it is building sites for specific countries. We recognise that Europe is made of many nations all of which have their own needs," she said.
Its localisation policy will see Opodo offer additional services on its site beyond hotel, flight and car bookings. The additional services will see Opodo work with companies like Insight Guides in the UK to give potential customers additional information about their destinations. Other features include 24 customer service, regional weather updates and interactive maps, all of which will appear on the same page as the flight booking services.
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, Lufthansa and Aer Lingus, who holds a 1.1 percent stake in the venture. It is currently headquartered in London and has received EUR128 million in funding from these airlines in 2001.
Some of the company's technology, content and marketing partners include Sapient, a key partner which provides the core technology behind the site, as well as BroadVision, eSubstance and Insight Guides.
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