Travelstart

Travelstart
Privately held company
Industry Travel
Internet
Founded 1999
Headquarters Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa
Key people
 Stephan Ekbergh (CEO)
Number of employees
 150+
Website www.travelstart.co.za

Travelstart is one of Africa’s largest [1] online travel booking websites offering flights, hotel bookings, car rental, vacation packages and other travel services through their online booking engine.[2] As of February 2016, Travelstart operates in Bahrain, Botswana, Egypt, Kenya, Kuwait, Morocco, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Tanzania Turkey, United Arab Emirates and Zimbabwe.[3] It trades in some territories as Geziko.[4][5]

Overview

The website uses global distribution systems such as Amadeus IT Group and Travelfusion for flights, and CarTrawler for online car hire bookings. Most revenue is generated from Pay per click (PPC) advertising, as well as an extensive affiliate network.

All Travelstart websites use Thawte to secure online payments.[6]

History

Travelstart was founded in Sweden in 1999 by Stephan Ekbergh. Before launching Travelstart, Ekbergh founded Sweden’s first online travel agency, Mr Jet (1995).[7]

In 2010, Travelstart Nordic was sold to eTRAVELi and the company headquarters was moved to Cape Town, South Africa.[8][9]

Emerging Markets

Since opening in South Africa in 2006,[10] Travelstart has expanded to include emerging markets throughout Africa, while avoiding countries such as India where the presence of online travel agencies has increased in recent years.[11] In 2012, Travelstart Nigeria was launched.[12]

Media

Before the 2010 FIFA World Cup, Travelstart made a public call to the South African travel industry to avoid hiking flight prices because of the influx of tourists that were expected to attend the games.[13]

On 14 November 2011 Travelstart released the results of a survey commissioned by them to expose what they perceived as discrepancies in flight ticket price quoting by traditional, bricks and mortar (or offline) travel agencies in South Africa.[14][15] Synovate was appointed to conduct the research, and when the results were made public in South African media it was met with dispute from a travel industry body called ASATA (Association of South African Travel Agents).[16][17] ASATA's reaction led Travelstart to resign voluntarily from the representative forum for the South African travel industry.[18] The Synovate research generated debate in the public domain around the pros and cons of booking travel online.[19][20]

See Also

References

  1. ↑ "Leading online travel agency Travelstart continues its global expansion with Egypt operations", CNN iReport, 2013-06-19
  2. ↑ "A relatively unknown outfit is rapidly becoming one of the biggest web businesses in South Africa", ITWeb Brainstorm, 2010-01-07
  3. ↑ "About Us". travelstart.co.za. Retrieved 3 February 2016.
  4. ↑ "Travelstart enters Turkey with Geziko brand", Arab Turkish Travel Gazette, 2012-11-23
  5. ↑ "Travelstart Tackles Turkey", Cape Business News, 2012-11-26
  6. ↑ "Verify SSL Web Server Wildcard Certificate"
  7. ↑ "Travel pioneer starts online roll-out in SA" , MyBroadband, 2006-08-30
  8. ↑ "eTRAVELi acquires competitor Travelstart in Europe", 2010-01-20
  9. ↑ "TravelStart sale to eTRAVELi triggers major Scandinavian power shift", Tnooz, 2010-01-21
  10. ↑ "A start-up with lots of potential", SouthAfrica.info, 2006-08-31
  11. ↑ "Expedia, Travelocity ready India operations", Livemint & The Wall Street Journal, 2007-10-17
  12. ↑ "Travelstart Travel Agency Launches in Nigeria". Retrieved 2015-07-09.
  13. ↑ "Stop flight-price deceit", Fin24.com, 2009-10-07
  14. ↑ "South Africans ripped off by travel agencies", Mail & Guardian, 2011-11-14
  15. ↑ "Travel agencies 'rip off' SA consumers", Fin24.com, 2011-11-14
  16. ↑ "ASATA responds to 'flight price shock' survey", gotravel24, 2011-11-15
  17. ↑ "ASATA TO REVIEW TRAVELSTART MEMBERSHIP AFTER SURVEY FURORE", Travel Industry Review (TIR), 2011-11-21
  18. ↑ "Travelstart Resigns From ASATA", Press Portal, 2011-12-05
  19. ↑ "Are SA travellers being taken for a ride?", gotravel24, 2011-11-14
  20. ↑ "Pros and cons of online booking", IOL Shopper, 2012-07-09

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Wednesday, February 03, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.