Recessionistas Go Continental To Stretch Pounds

With the euro hot on the pound's heels, and the dollar no longer the deal it used to be, Cheapflights.co.uk finds holidaymakers are flying east to chase cheaper currencies.

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Quote startThe recession is having two clear effects on destination selectionQuote end

(PRWEB) May 24, 2009

Brit-magnet resorts including Tenerife and Lanzarote are likely to lose summer traffic to up-and-coming resorts this year, according to Cheapflights.co.uk's latest figures. Compared with 2008, online searches for tickets to Tenerife are down 45 per cent and Lanzarote down 18 per cent.

Cheapflights.co.uk, the UK's leading flight price comparison website, has also found New York City - once the shopping destination of choice due to a weak dollar - has seen searches fall 27 per cent as the pound loses value.

The top destinations for April are all part of the Continent. The non-Euro beach resort of Antalya (up 83 per cent) led the way, followed by the buzzing city of Berlin (up 83 per cent), the 'recession Riviera' destination of Malta (up 63 per cent) and the City of Bridges, Venice (up 56 per cent). Rome saw a staggering 87 per cent increase in searches, with the April Easter period a likely factor for the surge.

"The recession is having two clear effects on destination selection," says Francesca Ecsery, General Manager of Cheapflights.co.uk.

"Traditional tourist hotspots, such as Rome, are enjoying a rebirth in interest while Euro-free resorts continue to build in popularity, drawing holidaymakers to destinations further afield. Value for money tops the search criteria for many Brits and looking outside the Eurozone or to big cities such as Rome and Berlin where hotel deals make the destination more attractive."

For in-depth destination information, visit Cheapflights.co.uk where you can search and compare flight deals and find travel tips and the latest industry news.

Notes to Editors

Cheapflights Ltd.: http://www.cheapflights.co.uk was launched in 1996. It pioneered the concept of online flight price search and comparison and has been consistently profitable since launch. It was the first UK dotcom to introduce pay-per-click in 2000, which helped to transform online advertising. Cheapflights does not sell tickets but publishes flight deals from airlines, budget airlines, online travel agents and the long tail of other specialist flight deal providers. It launched its US site http://www.cheapflights.com in May 2003, which has rapidly grown and which now provides half of Cheapflights' millions of monthly visits by consumers. Its Canadian site http://www.cheapflights.ca which was launched in April 2007 is already enjoying traffic of over 300,000 monthly visits. The first non-English language site http://www.cheapflug.de was "light" launched in Germany in October 2008. Cheapflights' main European and North American sites each provide consumers with rapid, easy to use comparisons of about 1 million flight deals daily from the broadest online selection of travel operators. The sites are valued by travel industry advertisers as a neutral, high-traffic source of quality high-conversion consumer leads. Cheapflights' status as an independent online travel price search and comparison and travel news site, together with its free opt-in subscriber newsletters makes it a natural starting point for finding travel deals and up-to-date travel industry information on both sides of the Atlantic.

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