Travel Website Industry Event

A COVENTRY business attracted some of the biggest names in the travel industry to the city on Thursday (March 3). Travel website Flightmapping.com hosted a networking conference at Browns in the city centre for fellow travel companies whose business model is based on affiliate marketing - a burgeoning form of internet advertising where websites are paid commission for the volume of bookings which they send to partner websites. Key industry players who attended the event included Virgin Atlantic, Singapore Airlines, First Choice Travel, Thomas Cook, Going Places and TUI, who operate budget airline Thomsonfly from Coventry Airport. A number of companies from other fields within the travel industry were also represented, including budget car rental operator EasyCar and hotel discounting website Superbreak. Flightmapping founder James Avery said: "Affiliate Marketing is a rapidly growing field within the Internet industry, and travel has being earmarked as being one of the biggest online growth areas. It is due to the rapid growth in this industry that we have been able to attract phenomenal interest from many of the major UK travel brands. " Flightmapping is one of the fastest growing travel websites in Britain, with over 5000 visitors each day, and sales of some '6 million worth of travel products annually.