Global Travel Market press release

Global Travel Market spears £2.2bn market with gapyear.com

Global Travel Market is now providing its flight search and price comparison technology to gapyear.com in a bid to access a market worth more than £2.2 billion annually in the UK alone. Global Travel Market CEO Dave Simmons said he was keen to strike the deal with the portal, which offers everything from flight and accommodation options to volunteering and insurance information thanks to the credibility it has gained with both the gap year market, which it is now dominating, and big business.

He added: 'We are delighted to be working with gapyear.com, a dominant online portal in the independent travel market / gap year space that we targeted from day one. Their recent ‘Best Youth Travel Website’ Award and launch of the first pre-paid Mastercard aimed at the backpacker market demonstrates their credibility as market-leaders launching ground-breaking products. The UK outbound Gap Year market is now worth over £2 billion. gapyear.com is the dominant portal in this space and our intention is to work together to develop offerings relevant for and demanded by this market and join gapyear.com in this lucrative, fast-growing space.'

gapyear.com founder Tom Griffiths said the flight search technology, which has been made available through the white label deal with Global Travel Market, was the best available due to it’s efficient comparative presentation of rich air content. He added: 'Travelling around the world on a gap year is all about designing your own itinerary according to your needs and dreams. This is why our on-line offering has proved so popular but to be sure our site visitors were getting the best possible service, we needed to know our flight search technology quickly offered the latest prices in an easily digestible form. This is why we signed the deal with Global Travel Market, whose experience in this arena is unparalleled.'

Griffiths also said the deal would help the site continue to penetrate a large, growing and lucrative market which has remained untapped by much of the travel trade. Griffiths said because of the length of the trips abroad, although gap year travellers account for just 1% of all UK outbound travellers they are responsible for 10% of all the overseas spend. A July 2005 Mintel Gap Year Report revealed the UK market spend in 2004 was between £2.2 billion and £2.5 billion with around 230,000 youth gappers aged between 18 and 24 spending between £3,000 and £4,000 each. Around 90,000 career gappers aged from 25 to 35 each spend between £6,000 and £9,000 on a trip while as many as 200,000 pre-retirement gappers aged 55 and over spend around £5,000 each while away.

Worldwide, the figures are even more impressive with the global gap year market estimated to be worth around £5 billion and predicted to grow to £11 billion by 2010, largely driven by the growing 55-plus baby boomer market as well as the overall growing popularity of the rites of passage trip.

ENDS

For media information from gapyear.com:
Tom Griffiths through Vicky Lee [Communications Manager]
tgriffiths@gapyear.com, vlee@gapyear.com

For media information or further quotes from Dave Simmons, CEO Global Travel Market,
Contact Amy Sullivan, Commercial Director at Global Travel Market on tel 0870 4999 550 or email amy@globaltravelmarket.co.uk