ONE year after unveiling its Asia-Pacific headquarters in Singapore (TTG Asia e-Daily, June 28, 2011), travel search site Skyscanner has moved to a larger premises to accommodate blistering annual growth of up to 400 per cent across the region.
Driven by use of the company’s suite of free mobile apps that have been downloaded over 11 million times across the globe, visits to the Skyscanner site via mobile devices contribute as much as 50 per cent of overall traffic in some Asia-Pacific markets. Traffic to Skyscanner in the region now makes up more than 15 per cent of the firm’s 30 million online hits per month.
Skyscanner currently employs 12 nationalities at its Singapore base covering all areas of Asia-Pacific. It also recently opened an office in Beijing, where it signed a deal with Chinese search engine Baidu to display Skyscanner results directly on the results page after a user searches for international flights.
Ewan Gray, Skyscanner’s director for Asia-Pacific, said: “The rate of growth in Asia-Pacific is now surpassing that of many European markets. We fully expect this trajectory to continue and plan to capitalise on this progress over the next few years by expanding further across the region.”
Skyscanner aims to expand its workforce in Singapore with further hires in marketing, technical and commercial, in addition to bolstering its team of specialist market development managers for Asia-Pacific.
