EasyJet was founded by Haji-Loannou in 1994. EasyJet, the company, is a low cost airline, looking to undercut traditional carriers that were already known and established in the industry.
Originally, the company ran its operations absolutely on direct phone sales. In April 1998, EasyJet went online. It was a shaky start but one that would grow into a stable foundation. Since its launch, the site had taken more than 800,000 bookings by March 2000. By September 2000, 85% of total sales were from their website and by 2003 over 90% of the total sales were from online sales.
Haji-Loannou was not the biggest fan of the internet, infact he even went as far as denouncing it at some point but his ability to adaptability and vision enabled him to see otherwise and actually benefit from utilizing the internet.
The effectiveness of the website is reflected on how many calls the site generates through it dedicated phone number. Majority of the calls made through the website’s dedicated phone number, were customer’s buying tickets. This is very astounding, especially when compared to the normal phone line, which usually has one buyer out of an average six calls made. Phone operators answering the website dedicated phone line were mostly selling tickets rather than answering questions.
The company’s new-media operations used to be handled by Tableau then eventually they were taken in-house and now Tableau acts as a strategic advisor.
Most of EasyJet’s promotions are internet-only promotions advertised in newspapers. These promotions are basically engineered to get rid of empty seats.
With the growth of the company over the years, EasyJet has been able to extend its brand with other services as part of the EasyGroup.
Apart from EasyJet, there is also;
• EasyEverything, which is a 400-seat chain of internet cafes offering access at competitive prices. Café customers can browse the EasyJet website for free.
• EasyRentacar, a