BRUSSELS, Belgium, Aug. 5, 2002 (PRIMEZONE) -- In July 2002 the Virgin Express Website underwent some major changes with regard to its structure, speed and content. These improvements have increased the Website's ease of use and are an incentive for customers to visit www.virgin-express.com more often to book flights online and to retrieve information about the airline.
The look and feel of the Website is now in line with the new logo and the company's corporate identity. One of the most obvious content changes is the presence of the booking engine on the home page. Another new feature is the "check prices" button. Research showed that many Website visitors were not very keen to enter the booking section to check availability and prices, because by doing so some of them wrongly thought they were committed to buy the flight at the moment they entered the reservation pages. The "check prices" button has resolved this problem. As a result websurfers will feel more at ease when checking prices and flights.
Many of the changes are not visible to the public because they relate to the programming and the structure of the Website. Nevertheless, these changes are essential to make the site more stable, faster and with enhanced "user-friendliness."
Over the past months Internet sales have progressed steadily. In the first semester of 2002 more than 277,000 seats were sold over the Internet. Web bookings are up 71.8 % in the 2nd quarter of 2002 compared to the websales during last year's same period.
At present 29.8% of the total seats sold are booked through the web. About 21% of the reservations come through the call centre and the remaining part is booked via travel agents and GDS.
More than 35% of the Internet bookings originate from Belgium compared to only 25% a year ago. That number has increased considerably over the past three months. In the 2nd quarter of 2002 the number of Belgian Internet bookings were up 39.1% compared to the first three months of this year. Thus, Belgium is by far the most important Internet market for Virgin Express. At the same time the low fare carrier has reinforced its position as being Belgium's largest e-retailer.
Virgin Express offers flights to 14 major European destinations: Athens, Barcelona, Copenhagen, Faro, Geneva, Gothenburg, Lisbon, London-Heathrow, Madrid, Malaga, Milan, Nice, Rome and Stockholm.