Hitwise, the leading online competitive intelligence service, today reveals that interest in Ryanair's week long "free flight" sale has pushed the site to take the #1 spot in the Commercial Airlines category based on weekly visits, ahead of easyJet for only the second time in the last two years.

Ryanair kicked off a price war last week offering free flights and yesterday, easyJet responded with its own sale slashing 30% off flight prices. Ryanair accounted for 15.81% share of UK Internet visits among Commercial Airline websites last week with easyJet taking 14.75%. Ryanair's share of visits increased by 20% from Wednesday 16^th May, the day the free-flight bonanza started, to the final day on Monday 21^st May. easyJet's response caused a 40% increase in daily visits to the website, putting easyJet back to the #1 spot yesterday.

Searches for "ryanair" also increased last week by 10% and Ryanair became the most searched-for Travel brand for the week ending 19^th May, a spot normally held by easyJet.

"Ryanair kicked off the price war in response to soft demand for flights and the campaign has worked to drive traffic to Ryanair, but so far hasn't boosted the Commercial Airlines category", commented Heather Hopkins, VP of Research for Hitwise UK. "The Commercial Airlines category saw its share of UK visits decline 4% last week, in spite of Ryanair's strong gains. The promotion has fuelled demand for free flights, and for Ryanair's promotion, but not for flights in general".

About Hitwise

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Only Hitwise provides its 1,200 global clients with daily insights on how their customers interact with a broad range of competitive websites, and how their competitors use different tactics to attract online customers.

Since 1997, Hitwise has pioneered a unique, network-based approach to Internet measurement. Through relationships with ISPs around the world, Hitwise's patented methodology anonymously captures the online usage, search, and conversion behaviour of 25 million Internet users. This unprecedented volume of Internet usage data is seamlessly integrated into our easy to use, web-based service, designed to help marketers better plan, implement, and report on a range of online marketing programs.

Hitwise is a privately held company headquartered in New York City and operates in the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong, and Singapore. More information about Hitwise is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis of online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com and the Hitwise Data Center at www.hitwise.com/datacenter.

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