Opodo

Opodo is a leading pan-European online travel company that specialises in worldwide travel. The company offers an unbiased and competitively priced online travel service for world travel, with access to flights from over 400 airlines, 34 000 hotel properties and over 7000 care hire locations worldwide, as well as travel insurance (Opodo, 2005). Opodo is owned by nine European airlines – Aer Lingus, Air France, Alitalia, Austrian Airlines, British Airways, Finnair, Iberia, KLM, Lufthansa and by Amadeus GDS, a travel industry technology provider (Wikipedia,2005).

Contents 1 History 2 Awards 3 Further Information 3.1 Competition 4 References 4.1 Contributors to this page include:

History

Opodo was formed in 2000 by nine of Europe’s leading airlines. Its two main objectives were to become a low cost distribution channel for travel products, and to become a leading player in the increasingly lucrative online travel market. Opodo launched its first site, www.opodo.de, in Germany in November, 2001. This was soon followed by the launches of the United Kingdom site, www.opodo.uk, in January, 2002, and the French site, www.opodo.fr, later that year in April. (Opodo,2005)

Opodo currently has been launched in, and operates in nine different countries. These include Germany, the United Kingdom, Spain, France, Italy, Finland, Denmark, Sweden and Norway (Twelve Stars, 2004).

Awards

• Chartered Institute of Marketing Travel Advertising Awards - Best Travel Website
• Chartered Institute of Marketing Travel Advertising Awards - Revolution Award - Best Brand Building by an Online Business

Further Information

Companies within the Opodo Group include the following:

• Opodo.co.uk
• Opodo.de
• Opodo.fr
• Opodo.es
• Quest Travel - one of the UK's leading independent long-haul travel specialists)
• Karavel - a leading French online tour operating company
• Eviaggi - an Italian online travel agency
• Travellink - a Nordic online travel agency

Competition

Online travel agencies in competition with Opodo include:

• Travelocity
• Orbitz

References

1. Opodo (2005) "Opodo," retrieved October 9, 2005, from http:/www.opodo.com/
2. Opodo (2005) "About Us," retrieved October 9, 2005, from http://www.opodo.com/about.html
3. Wikipedia (2005) "Opodo," retrieved October 10, 2005, from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Opodo
4. Twelve Stars (2004) Transforming travel distrbution in Europe: Creating Europes leading online travel business in record time

Contributors to this page include:

Roxanne Hawes 12:37, 16 Oct 2005 (EST)