Online travel specialist
ebookers.com has
inked a two-year alliance with
AOL Europe
extending across nine countries.
In exchange for certain guaranteed levels of
advertising and promotion on AOL Europe’s
services, ebookers.com will pay £15 million
($24 million), spread over the two-year period.
The deal will give a measure of exclusivity to
ebookers.com’s presence on AOL Europe’s sites,
with the travel specialist being the only
partner displaying selected fares on the main
Travel Channel pages of each online service.
Dinesh Dhamija, chief executive officer of
ebookers.com, hailed the deal as the most significant
for his company to date.
“To sign an exclusive pan-European deal with a company
of the calibre and stature of AOL Europe further
strengthens the ebookers.com brand and allows us to
expand our sales and branding efforts across Europe,”
said Dhamija.
The agreement between the two firms covers AOL
and CompuServe services in the U.K., Germany, France,
Switzerland, the Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg,
Austria and Sweden. It also includes AOL Europe’s
web-based brands, including Netscape Online in the U.K.
AOL Europe will incorporate ebookers.com’s flight booking
service in each of its Flight Centers, as well as
integrating ebookers.com’s email airfare notification
service, “Fare Alert,” into its services.
Andreas Schmidt, president and chief executive officer
of AOL Europe, said the new relationship would offer
users a huge choice of fares and services, plus
access to information to meet all their travel needs.
ebookers.com plc is a spin-off from Flightbookers plc
and completed its initial public offering in November 1999.
It offers discounted airfares with 72 major airlines,
and discounted rooms at over 14,000 hotels worldwide.