Opodo: European Airlines Join Forces, Create Internet Travel Agency
June 27, 2001
European Airlines Join Forces,
Create Internet Travel Agency
By ANDREAS HOFFBAUER and THOMAS NONNAST
HANDELSBLATT
Nine leading European airlines announced a joint venture to implement their plans for an Internet travel agency.
The new company, to be called Opodo, will be independent from its partners -- Lufthansa, British Airways, Air France, Alitalia, Aer Lingus, Austrian Airlines, Finnair, Iberia and KLM -- and is the result of an initiative spearheaded last year by British Airways.
The companies said Opodo will offer flights and packages over the Internet and use pan-European booking system Amadeus, which will give it access to flights offered by around 480 airlines, as well as to 54,500 hotels and 23,500 car-rental outlets. The partner airlines said the new company will be based in London and is scheduled to start business by the end of this year with 100 employees. Initially, it will limit its activities to British, German and French markets, but plans Europe-wide presence by the end of 2003, the partners said.
Opodo Chief Executive and former Alitalia board member Giovanni Bisignani on Tuesday said that online booking has yet to achieve the kind of penetration in Europe that it has in the U.S. But there is a strong trend toward it and Opodo expects the market to explode over the next few years, he said.
Thomas Holtrop, chief executive of Deutsche Telekom AG's Internet subsidiary T-Online, recently described tourism as one of the main growth areas of the Internet. A few weeks ago, his company, Europe's leading Internet-service provider, set up T-Online Travel AG, a joint venture in which it will hold a 75.1% stake. Its partners, tourism groups Preussag AG and Thomas Cook AG, formerly C&N Touristik, will each hold a 12.5% stake.
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