Youtravel.com is aiming to double its turnover next year after announcing European-wide revenues of £45 million for its first year’s trading.
Chief executive John Kent said the online bed bank had originally aimed for a turnover of £40 million in its first year ending in October and was pleased to have broken its target. It had passenger carryings of nearly 300,000.
With many of the company’s best-performing agents only signing up half way through the year’s trading and the opening of a new French-facing site, he said: “We are confident of hitting these targets, which may seem ambitious for a young company. There is growth to be had.
“As we launched at the end of October we missed out on a lot of turn-of-year bookings to those who had been established longer for those early sales periods.”
Sales and marketing director Paul Riches said the launch of the French-facing website will not only kickstart sales from the French market but also drive UK sales as it will involve signing up new French properties.
He added the UK market remains the most important to youtravel.com, having accounted for 95% of the entire turnover in the first year and is expected to generate 70% in 2008.
Riches added the company is hoping to achieve much of the sales growth through the travel trade, adding: “Our primary aim in all of our markets is to use travel agents to grow our sales and we really want to push the business to business markets.”