Skyscanner has reported a 54% year on year increase in site traffic for the first quarter of 2009. More than 50 million flight searches now take place each month on the site.

“We’re very pleased with the overall growth for the quarter, but it is the continued acceleration in growth which is exceptionally positive,” said Gareth Williams, CEO of Skyscanner.

“At the beginning of 2009 we reported year on year growth of 32%. This has accelerated rapidly over the last three months, culminating last week in growth of 87% over the March 2008 figures.”

Context for these growth figures was provided by the announcement from online intelligence agency Hitwise at the start of 2009 which reported a 42% drop in internet searches for flights across the online travel sector.

Airline-News comment : Seems that customers are well educated about meta search for travel products now and are probably not needing to search google for flights rather they either go to the travel company direct or to a site like skyscanner or cheapflights.co.uk or for hotel price comparison roomwizard. From the airline and tour operator supply side there are of course less choices than 2007 and 2008 with the merger of the big four tour operators into two and the loss of XL and so many other airlines in 2008 meaning customers are getting to know where to look and don’t need Google / Yahoo so much.

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