Online Users Top 3.1 Million; Internet Accounts For Record 38% Of January Bookings
HONOLULU, Feb. 9 /PRNewswire/ -- Cheap Tickets, Inc. (Nasdaq: CTIX - news), a leading provider of discount travel products, announced today that by the end of January 2000, its e-commerce site, Cheaptickets.com, had recorded approximately 3.1 million registered users. Internet gross bookings in 1999 reached a record $143.9 million, a 480 percent increase over 1998.
``We are exceptionally pleased to see our Internet business explode,'' said Sam Galeotos, Cheap Tickets' president and COO. ``We started the year with a record 491,000 new registered users in January. Our Internet gross bookings last month reached a landmark 38 percent of our total bookings.''
Cheap Tickets continues to make significant strides in developing its Internet brand. Internet advertising in the fourth quarter of 1999 increased 164 percent over the same period the previous year, while gross Internet bookings increased by 271 percent, reaching $40 million.
Galeotos continued, ``With a recent daily average of approximately 63,000 visitors and new registered users exceeding 18,000 each day, the site now sells airfares at an unprecedented rate of one ticket every 30 seconds.''
As the largest discount travel web site on the Internet, Cheaptickets.com offers more discount airfares than Expedia, Inc., Preview Travel, Inc., Priceline.com and Lowestfare.com combined. Registered users can search for, and book flights from, Cheap Tickets' database of more than 400,000 non- published airfares plus millions of regularly priced airfares published on the Sabre reservations system. Consumers can search through millions of airfares in ascending order of price and purchase them online directly from Cheap Tickets.
``The strong start we have seen this year shows that we are right on track,'' said Galeotos. ``The tremendous growth we've seen in Internet bookings and new users proves to us that Cheaptickets.com is fast becoming the travel value site of choice for budget-savvy travelers every day.''