Skyscanner’s Global and Mobile Growth Accelerates in 2015

19 Feb 2016, 00:00 AM EST

Company Delivers Seventh Consecutive Year of Double-Digit Growth and
Healthy Profitability

EDINBURGH, Scotland–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Skyscanner, the global travel search engine, today announced its
financial results for the year ending 31 December 2015.

Revenues were £120 million ($183 million), up 28 percent compared to
the prior year.
Excluding the unfavourable impact of currency exchange rates, revenues
grew 34 percent, gaining momentum in the second half of the year in
which they grew 36 percent.
Normalised EBITDA before statutory adjustments was £22 million ($34
million), up 5 percent compared to last year.
Gross bookings for the year were $11.2 billion, up 49 percent compared
to the prior year.

“2015 was another strong year for Skyscanner, showing solid progress in
our strategy of expansion beyond our home market, into mobile and beyond
flights,” said Gareth Williams, Skyscanner CEO and co-founder. “Our
first-half focus on investing in our product drove momentum for the
business in the second half. We also saw excellent growth in travellers
planning their trips on Skyscanner all around the world, especially on
mobile and in the important regions of Asia Pacific and the Americas.
Skyscanner’s global coverage, our direct relationships with partners and
travellers and the self-built technology that underpins our success,
account for our solid performance in 2015.”

Key milestones in 2015 included:

Visitors to Skyscanner in 2015 grew 48 percent over the prior year,
with a record 50 million monthly visitors. Mobile visitors grew 60
percent and now represent 59 percent of total visitors, up seven
percentage points in just twelve months. Increasingly, travellers are
looking not just to plan, but also to book from a Skyscanner mobile
platform – mobile web bookings grew by 24% year on year, comprising
42% of all conversions.
The Asia Pacific region continued to show strong growth, with visitors
increasing 48 percent last year. Mobile visitors grew 62 percent year
over year. This includes Japan, the third largest travel market in the
world where Skyscanner and Yahoo! JAPAN established a new joint
venture, Skyscanner Japan, in July.
In China, a focus for Skyscanner since the acquisition of Youbibi in
2014, visitors grew 67 percent and mobile visitors nearly doubled.
The Americas region saw 55 percent growth in visitors last year, more
than doubling in the U.S. Mobile visitors in the region nearly
doubled. The company also launched in Mexico.
Visitors in Europe grew 42 percent, with mobile visitors growing 55
percent.
Skyscanner’s award-winning apps downloaded more than 40 million times
in total.
Beyond Skyscanner’s Flights business, Skyscanner for Business, the
company’s B2B arm, saw revenue double. During the year, Skyscanner for
Business launched its own Car Hire white label product and increased
partners 75 percent to 400, including major brands such as MSN.
Revenue from Skyscanner’s Car Hire product grew by 71 percent in 2015.

Skyscanner took important steps in 2015 to improve its product for
travellers and partners and to bolster further the pool of talent that
builds the product and takes it to market. Skyscanner opened two new
offices last year, engineering hubs in London and Sofia, in addition to
the expansion of existing spaces in Budapest and Miami. The company took
on over 280 new hires in 2015 – technical talent now makes up half of
Skyscanner’s 770 strong team across the world.

Skyscanner also marked up several industry firsts for the company in
2015, including an artificial intelligence voice search tool for
Amazon’s Alexa and the first ticket sold using new NDC capabilities with
British Airways. The company also introduced a facilitated booking
service with a number of partners, including Air Canada.

About Skyscanner

Skyscanner is a leading global travel search company providing free
search of flights, hotels and car hire around the world.
Founded in 2003, Skyscanner helps over 50 million people each month to
find their travel options.
Skyscanner is available in 30 languages.
Skyscanner’s highly-rated free mobile apps have been downloaded over
40 million times.
The privately-owned company employs over 700 staff and has ten global
offices in Barcelona, Beijing, Budapest, Edinburgh, Glasgow, London,
Miami, Shenzhen, Singapore and Sofia.
For more information, please visit www.skyscanner.net
and our blog.