Low-Cost Airline Online Gross Bookings Grow Fast for Eastern Europe

Since 2002 the Eastern Europe region has experienced massive growth in Low Cost Carrier (LCC) online gross bookings, increasing from 2 million euros to 526 million euros according to recent research.

Through their lean cost structures, strong business models and competitive pricing, many LCCs are successfully winning the battle with traditional carriers to gain their share of the rapidly growing online travel market in Eastern Europe.

Indeed, the growth of Eastern European low cost carriers is in turn fuelling online travel growth in the region. Internet penetration is expected to reach 46 percent overall by 2010 and there are signs that the LCC’s are now playing their e-education role in this region, as they did in Western Europe a few years ago.

The LCCs monopolize their own domestic markets, generally sell their seats using both online and offline channels but are seeing impressive growth in the proportion of bookings made online.

In 2006, Wizz Air, with its headquarters in Hungary, sold almost 75 percent of its seats online, followed by SkyEurope (Slovakia) and Centralwings (Poland), which sold 65 percent and 60 percent of seats online respectively.

The Eastern European e-travelers have reacted positively to the introduction of online booking channels but one of the main reasons behind them not reaching even higher rates are mainly due to infrastructural problems which are ever-improving. So much so that Eastern European LCC gross online booking expenditure is forecast to grow by 38 percent to 864 million euros by 2010.

Among the Eastern European countries, Poland maintains strong growth and now has the fourth highest low-cost market share with 21 percent. Slovakia remains dominated by low cost carriers.