Skyscanner Gaining Momentum In Asia-Pacific

By Saraswathi Muniappan KUALA LUMPUR, April 1 (Bernama) -- Edinburgh-based Skyscanner, the global travel search engine, is gaining momentum in Asia-Pacific, especially after its partnership with Yahoo! Japan. "Asia is definitely one of the regions we are looking at," its Marketing Manager, Singapore & Malaysia, Pamela Knaggs said. She said the Asia-Pacific continued to show strong growth, with visitors increasing 48 per cent last year as compared with 2014. Mobile visitors grew 62 per cent. This includes Japan, the third largest travel market in the world where Skyscanner and Yahoo! Japan established a new joint-venture, Skyscanner Japan, in July last year, she told Bernama in an interview recently. Founded in 2003, Skyscanner, which is available in 30 languages, including Bahasa Malaysia, has helped over 50 million people each month to find their travel options, she said. Knaggs believes that Skyscanner has the edge compared with other similar seach engine as it has comprehensive coverage with 1,200 partners globally across various airlines, hotels and car hire companies. "We are customer-centric and adoptive of customers feedbacks," she said. She stressed that Skyscanner ensures that the price displayed includes all the charges such as tax and credit card fee. "We want to ensure that the users get the final price and airlines that don't follow that requirement will be dropped," she said, adding that such features made Skyscanner a much sought-after search engine for travellers. Its Chief Executive Officer and Co-­Founder, Gareth Williams, had recently said that 2015 was another strong year for Skyscanner, showing solid progress in its strategy of expansion beyond the home market, into mobile and beyond flight. Its revenue for 2015 was US$183 million (about RM720 million), up 28 per cent compared with the prior year, while gross booking for the year were US$11.2 billion (RM44 billion), up 49 per cent compared to 2014. "Our first ­half focus on investing in our product drove momentum for the business in the second half. We also saw excellent growth in travellers planning their trips on Skyscanner all around the world, especially on mobile and in the important regions of Asia-Pacific and the Americas. Skyscanner's global coverage, its direct relationships with partners and travellers and the self-built technology that underpins its success and solid performance in 2015, he had said. Sovereign wealth fund, Khazanah Nasional Bhd, is among five new partners of Skyscanner who between them invested US$183.62 million (£128 million) this year. The other four investors were Artemis, Baillie Gifford, Vitruvian Partners and Yahoo!Japan. The privately-­owned company employs over 700 staff and has ten global offices in Barcelona, Beijing, Budapest, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London, Miami, Shenzhen, Singapore and Sofia. --BERNAMA