Travelsupermarket will embark on another round of high-profile marketing next year, including an £8 million TV campaign.
The brand will substantially increase its marketing budget to £11 million for the next year, including a £1 million spurt for five weeks from December 26 to push the site during the busy booking period over the Christmas break and into the new year.
Travelsupermarket spent about £3.5 million this year, predominantly on a TV advertising campaign on UK terrestrial and digital channels.
The company said the increase in offline marketing was a bold initiative but expected the new flurry of activity would help it push ahead in what is becoming an increasingly crowded market.
General manager Chris Nixon said: “We see 2007 as a key year and aim to more than double visitor numbers from an average of 80,000 a day in 2006 to more than 160,000 a day next year.”
The travel and meta search sector is expected to enter a highly competitive period in 2007 following the recent UK launches of SideStep and Kayak, two major US websites with strong ambitions to expand into European markets.
Nixon said the latest round of marketing was in keeping with the company’s philosophy to expand quickly and be innovative with its marketing strategy.
“However, one of the contributory reasons for us looking to increase our size and stature at such a dramatic rate is that we have received feedback from our providers telling us they have a great appetite for more visitors and that an excellent way of acquiring them is through travelsupermarket.com,” Nixon said.