Discount supermarket Aldi is to launch an online travel agency in the UK offering discounted holidays.
Aldi announced the site, which will go live in January, at World Travel Market 2008. The venture follows the success of a similar operation in Austria, which has sold one million holidays since 2003.
Alditravel.co.uk will feature product supplied by Austrian-based tour operator Eurotours and will initially include three to five-star summer sun product. City breaks, ski and cruise holidays will be added later on. The site will offer six hand-picked deals each fortnight, which will be advertised on leaflets in Aldi stores.
All flights, hotels and transfers will be covered by supplier failure cover, which will be included in the price. Aldi group buying director Sarah Butler said: “We wanted to give our customers an opportunity to beat the credit crunch on their holiday. Aldi shoppers are used to checking their leaflet for the week’s top bargains and now they will start looking at it for holidays as well.
“We aim to provide the best price in the market. We are not going up against Expedia or Lastminute.com by offering thousands of options. We are looking to drive business through a small number of hotels.”
She added: “In Austria, we are the number two online travel agency and we’d love to have the same success in the UK.”
The site will have call centres in Vienna and Manchester to provide pre and post-booking customer service.
* More WTM 2008 coverage at travelweekly.co.uk/wtm2008