Travelzoo plans European launches for fly.com meta engine

Travelzoo plans to launch European versions of its new meta search engine fly.com in 2009, Travolution can reveal. The deals publishing company unveiled its new meta search service last week, just days after announcing it paid $1.8 million for the fly.com domain. Bosses plans to run the new fly.com wing of the business separate from…

Travelzoo plans to launch European versions of its new meta search engine fly.com in 2009, Travolution can reveal.

The deals publishing company unveiled its new meta search service last week, just days after announcing it paid $1.8 million for the fly.com domain.

Bosses plans to run the new fly.com wing of the business separate from the existing and successful Travelzoo arm.

It is unknown which countries will be targeted first in the European market, although Travolution understands that approaches have been made to purchase other ‘fly’-related domains in Europe.

Brian Clark, senior vice president and general manager for search products at Travelzoo who is heading fly.com, told Travolution there will “cross-populating” between Travelzoo.com and fly.com, with deals from Travelzoo appearing on search results in the meta search engine.

He added: “Fly.com content is much more penetrating than the deals content as displayed via Travelzoo’s travel deals.”

Fares on fly.com are said to be from a number of sources, including GDSs. There are no plans to actively “scrape” fares into fly.com unless a supplier requests it, Clark said.

Europe managing director Chris Loughlin told Travolution: “Fly.com allows airlines who want additional distribution to take advantage of a new medium, obviously the url fly.com is a natural magnate. For consumers, we are offering more choice and greater ease.

The technology powering fly.com was custom built by Travelzoo over the past 12 months. Clark was formerly vice president for sales and marketing at Virgin America.