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Champion Travel launches online bookings
Champion Travel is to use its Directflights.com site to sell travel online.
The Surrey-based travel group plans to challenge the dominance of the established Internet travel sites in the UK by selling £350 million of travel online annually, within five to 10 years. It currently has an annual turnover of £10 million.
It plans to sell a complete range of travel on Directflights.com, and has registered a second name, Directnights, through which to sell hotel accommodation online. The company will use Sabre’s online booking engine to power the sites.
Minesh Patel, Chairman of Champion Travel, said the Internet remained a rich source of business, and that many traditional travel agencies had virtually surrendered the online channel to companies like lastminute.com and e-bookers.
He said: “Forty percent of all online expenditure goes on travel – it’s madness to write that business off. The technology is now available to allow travel agents to compete in the online market, so why not? (Lastminute.com’s) Martha Lane Fox isn’t doing anything that I can’t.”
Mr Patel said the ability for travel agencies to offer negotiated fares on their websites is important because the established online travel sites have negotiated their own bulk discounts with the airlines. He said: “Many ‘traditional’ agents are under the impression that it is impossible to compete online with the established Internet travel sites because of the special rates they get from airlines.
“The reality is that many travel agents already have negotiated rates that are close to, or the same as, the big online travel sites. It’s simply a question of being able to sell these fares online as well.”
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