START-UP Internet company eDreams claims it is learning lessons from the launch of its Italian site that will be useful when the UK version goes live in June.
It has put 700 products up for sale on the Italian site and this is expected to rise to 2,000 later this spring. Users are presently looking at an average of eight pages every time they visit the site.
UK marketing director Karen Gee said: “I am interested to see if any of the results, in terms of the most popular pages, the most interesting holidays and any specific customer feedback, can be built into the UK launch later this year.
The UK and Italy have traditionally been thought to be quite different holiday markets but we’re increasingly finding that there are more similarities than differences.”
Gee claims that the UK travel market has always been more price aggressive than Italy but Italy is now catching up.
As a result, she believes that the same product positioning, pricing and marketing strategies are likely to work in both countries.
EDreams, which has secured some $20m in investment capital, is also planning to launch a further range of sites in Spain, France and Germany.