Newcomer takes a big bite

Mette Blåfjell, Country Manager at lowcostholidays.no.

Lowcostholidays.com was founded in 2004 by Englishman Paul Evans. The name sounds unfamiliar to many in Norway, but the low-cost airline has over two million travelers and has done very well in the UK. The owner is now investing heavily in the rest of the European market.

Good Norwegian start
Lowcostholidays.no established itself in Norway in November 2011 and began marketing the website in the new year.
- "It was a good time to start up in Norway. We knew that many Norwegians spend the first few days of the year looking at travel and planning their summer vacation," says Mette Blåfjell, Country Manager at lowcostholidays.no.

Focused on the top
Since lowcostholidays.no was a brand new player in the Norwegian travel market, they wanted to build brand awareness, trigger interest in travel and attract as many people as possible to their website. It was also important for the travel company to reach as many people as possible in a limited amount of time. They therefore opted for a fixed top banner on the front page of Dagbladet.no. The ad space ran for two days and showed different messages and destinations. The ads focused on typical "Norwegian" holiday destinations, such as Gran Canaria, Turkey and Greece.

Doubled the number of visitors
The response from a travel-ready Norwegian audience was overwhelming, and bookings came flooding in.
- "In the two days we were on Dagbladet.no, we had an exceptionally good click-through rate, and we doubled the number of visitors to our pages," says Blåfjell, who is convinced that it is the low prices that enticed sun-thirsty Norwegians to check out the new operator.
- "Our trips are probably a little cheaper than the Norwegian public is used to, so people clicked in to see what we could offer and at what prices," she says.

Natural to go online
The travel company's first advertisements in the Norwegian media consisted solely of online advertising - and only on Dagbladet.no. According to Mette Blåfjell, it was only natural to go online.
- "As lowcostholidays is a purely online agency, we have always used the internet as our main channel. We will continue to do so here in Norway as well, which is why websites such as Dagbladet.no, finn.no and vg.no will be natural places for us to advertise in the future. We will also make use of some print in the largest newspapers, including in connection with the travel trade fair," says the Country Manager.

Serious player
Blåfjell says the following about Norwegians' skepticism about yet another new online travel agency:
- "People are probably a little skeptical at first, because there have been a number of online travel companies that have come and gone in recent years. Norwegians have also previously tended to like the safe and familiar. But lowcostholidays.com has been around for six years, and a lot of people have traveled with us. We also have a call center with Scandinavian-speaking staff, which our customers can call if they need to speak to someone or book by phone. In addition, we are backed by one of the UK's most stable banks and are a member of the Norwegian Travel Guarantee Fund. I am therefore confident that we will be taken as a serious player, and we are ready to provide Norwegians with both cheap and good travel experiences," concludes Mette Blåfjell.