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Online travel agency Ebookers plans to close its shop in Dublin in May 2006, thus becoming an exclusively online travel agent operating with the support of a call center, the media reports.
This decision was made in the wake of a review of the Irish business, which was purchased by Cendant Corporation in March of 2005.
The demand for online booking has escalated, while the income from the agency’s offline business has remained at the same level for over five years. Ciaran Lally, managing director of the agency in Britain and Ireland, commented that the store drew 60% of business a little over a year ago, while at the present it comprises just 15%. There has been a dramatic shift to online booking, which is why the managers decided to close down the store.
Ebookers plan to increase their sales, which exceeded GBP 28 million in 2005, by around 30%. Lally informs that the agency is the biggest Internet operator in Ireland by a long shot, ahead of competitors like gohop.com and lastminute.com.
The managing director reports that the travel market grows by around 25% year-on-year. Hotel and flight reservations at Ebookers have doubled and tripled in the respective period. Lally predicts that other Irish businesses in this sector will follow in their footsteps and establish exclusively online reservations.
Apparently the main factor is broadband. It has held the Irish market back, but when that is resolved more and more businesses will start closing down their shops.
The travel agency will not make any obligatory redundancies. The personnel will be appointed to other positions within the structures of the company.

In related news, low-cost Irish air carrier Ryanair announced that its CEO Michael O’Leary will appear naked in Warsaw city center if Polish carrier LOT eliminates their fuel overcharge policy. A conflict has erupted between Ryanair and LOT over the surcharges. LOT’s spokesman Leszek Chorzewski announced on a Polish TV news channel that Ryanair’s CEO would walk down the busiest boulevard in Warsaw naked to draw attention to the fuel surcharge issue. The Irish carrier ensures that Polish passengers will always be offered the lowest fares and there will be no fuel surcharge, ever. Ryanair is aware that LOT has no intentions to remove the surcharge, which is in the amount of GBP 75. The Irish company plans to expose LOT’s profiteering at every chance they get. They claim that the Polish carrier is using fuel as an excuse to charge higher fares.