Skyscanner marks mobile success with 20m app downloads

EDINBURGH, Scotland--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Skyscanner, the world’s fastest growing travel search site, has seen its mobile apps grow by over 400% in the past year as mobile visits overtake web for the first time. The Skyscanner flight search app has been downloaded over 20 million times.

At the current rate, the app is downloaded somewhere in the world every second and there have been over 250 million searches made since Skyscanner first launched its apps. During the busiest travel booking week in January, Skyscanner’s mobile app was the number 1 free travel iPhone app in over 100 markets including the US.^*

South Korea leads the way in mobile travel search, with 80% of all flight searches to the Skyscanner site now coming from mobile devices. While Japan and India are also experiencing a rapid move towards planning and booking travel on the go, the trend is far from being limited to Asia. Travellers from Australia, Brazil, Canada and the US are now using mobile devices for over 70% of flight searches, compared with a global average of 53%.

Bonamy Grimes, Chief Strategy Officer and Co-founder of Skyscanner says: “We’ve reached a clear tipping point for customers, particularly in the tech-savvy Far East, in the US and large emerging markets such as Brazil, who now want to plan and book their travel on the go. Yet we’re also seeing our app growth boosting web traffic as users move between platforms to plan and book their travel.

“It’s clear that online businesses need to be mobile to succeed over the coming years and we’ve very much reached this point. We’ve focused our mobile strategy on making the most of the technology on each platform rather than replicating our site on a smaller screen. It’s far more consumer friendly and we’re seeing our users respond. For instance, Android and Windows users can pin live tiles to the homepage to keep an eye on flight price changes, while BlackBerry users can share and chat about a search using BBM technology. We’re continuing to build on our free text search and voice recognition technology to make the mobile travel booking process as intuitive as possible.”

Skyscanner launched its first highly-rated flight search app in February 2011 and it is now available in over 30 languages on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, Windows 8 and BlackBerry, including a new release for BlackBerry 10.

^*Source: App Annie download rankings.

About Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a leading global travel search site providing instant online comparisons for millions of flights plus hotels and car hire. Founded in 2003 by three IT professionals, Gareth Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes, Skyscanner is the no.1 travel search website in Europe and no.3 worldwide, receiving over 30 million visits per month. Skyscanner’s travel search site is available in 40 countries and in 30 languages. Skyscanner’s highly-rated free mobile apps are available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and Windows 8 devices and have been downloaded over 20 million times. The company employs 180 staff and has its global headquarters in Edinburgh, with a second Scottish office in Glasgow. Skyscanner also has offices in Singapore and Beijing and plans to open a Miami office in 2013.

Join us at www.facebook.com/skyscanner