Founder John Hatt Headquarters London, United Kingdom Founded 1996 | Website www.cheapflights.co.uk Owner Momondo Group | |
Industry Flight Search Engine and travel information Key people Hugo Burge, CEO
Andrew Shelton, Managing Director Subsidiaries Dohop Ltd., SkyGate International A/S, Cheapflights Media (USA) Inc. Profiles | ||
Cheapflights is a travel metasearch engine which compares flight prices from thousands of airlines and online travel agents. Established in 1996, Cheapflights was the first flight search and comparison website. The company is headquartered in London with an additional office in Boston, and is owned by Copenhagen-based Momondo Group.
Contents
History
Cheapflights was founded in 1996 by former travel journalist John Hatt. Following a management buy-in in early 2000 by entrepreneurs David Soskin and Hugo Burge, Cheapflights introduced the pay-per-click (PPC) online advertising remuneration model.
The company launched its US site in May 2003. In 2005, Cheapflights launched its travel blog. By 2006, Cheapflights made £1 billion in travel sales annually. Cheapflights launched its site in Canada in April 2007. In 2008, the UK site was relaunched with new technology.
In 2011, Cheapflights Media Ltd purchased Copenhagen-based meta-search site Momondo and its parent company Skygate International. In 2012, the company underwent a corporate rebranding, adopting the name Momondo Group, as part of its stated strategy to move into more non-English-speaking markets. The company also announced expansion into Australia, and in April 2013, launched a country-specific Cheapflights site in New Zealand. Cheapflights began introducing its new meta-search site which replaced the company's previous search technology.
In October 2014, Boston-based private equity fund Great Hill Partners invested £80 million in Cheapflights' parent company, Momondo Group. Cheapflights launched its South African site in February 2015, and expanded its meta-search technology to the UK site in June 2015.
The company recorded 500,000 users across its websites in one day in January 2016. In February 2016, Cheapflights updated its website and app with personalization tools used to save preferences. At that time, the mobile application was being downloaded 200,000 times per month.
Operations
Cheapflights is a publishing platform for flight prices, which compares up-to-date prices arranged by destination from suppliers including major airlines through tiny travel agents. The company uses pay-per-click and display advertising. Agents advertise on the Cheapflights website and are charged on a pay-per-click basis for users who link through to their websites.