Travelling Aussies the focus of new online service - News - Business

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This story was printed from ZDNet Australia.
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Travelling Aussies the focus of new online service

By James Pearce, ZDNet Australia
July 09, 2002
URL: http://www.zdnet.com.au/news/business/soa/Travelling-Aussies-the-focus-of-new-online-service/0,139023166,120266533,00.htm

Australia's e-commerce options have increased with the introduction of a new Asia-Pacific region online travel portal.

Zuji was founded by Travelocity.com, Qantas Airways and eight other airlines, and has since been joined by a further eight airlines, including Air New Zealand.

Citing statistics from an upcoming study by Phocus Wright, Zuji expects the market for online travel for the AsiaPac region to grow from US$2.7 billion in 2002 to US$8 billion in 2004, or almost ten percent of the total travel market.

Wong Kot Kit, chief financial officer of Zuji, told a press conference Zuji expects to be profitable within three years of the -hard launch" early next year, and has the funds to cover operations until that time. Currently Zuji has only made a -soft launch", with advertising only on its own site, in an attempt to build a customer database to fine-tune its site. It aims to have 500,000 registrations by the end of the year, 200,000 from Australia.

Peter Kelly, group general manager of sales and distribution for Qantas, said it has no plans to make special fares available to Zuji, and will continue selling tickets through its own site.

-We see it as just another channel," said Kelly. -We could see it being established in Australia with or without Qantas, so when the opportunity came to be a part of it we took it."

Zuji plan to eventually offer a white label product to travel agents so they can use Zuji technology to go online, but say that service won't be available for at least six months. It is currently searching for a CEO.