Skyscanner is a global travel search site and app, a place where people are inspired to plan and book directly from millions of travel options at the best prices.
Skyscanner’s CEO and co-founder Gareth Williams became fascinated with computers as a teenager. Before founding Skyscanner, Gareth worked as a ‘programmer for hire’, and as a keen skier would regularly escape to the slopes between contracts. However, Gareth soon became frustrated with the difficult and tedious process of searching multiple airline and travel agent websites to find the best flight prices.
Gareth envisioned a solution: a single website that could collect, collate and compare prices for every commercial flight in the world. A pub brainstorming session with friends and co-founders Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes followed and Skyscanner was born. Skyscanner initially grew by word of mouth, and when thousands of people were using the prototype site every day, the three founders quit their day jobs. They opened an office in Edinburgh, and officially launched the Skyscanner site in 2003.
Skyscanner is unbiased and free, which means the more than 60 million people who use us every month can trust our comprehensive range of flight, hotel and car hire options. Our secret is in our self-built and industry pioneering technology, connecting travellers to the industry and the industry to travellers.
We help travellers book more than 2 million flights a month and we also deliver a set of products to the travel industry, including over 1000 API and White Label partnerships as well as advanced partner data analytics.
We’re very much a mobile marketplace – our highly-rated free mobile app has been downloaded over 70 million times and over 60% of our traffic comes from a mobile device.
Skyscanner is available in more than 30 languages and 70 currencies: we’re a global business with a local outlook. The Skyscanner team is made up of over 50 nationalities and 900 people across 10 offices, and we’ve been part of the Ctrip family since December 2016.
Need a comment, travel data or insight into a travel trend?
As the world’s travel search engine, we can quickly find data to support a story you’re planning, whether it’s where consumers are planning to visit next, to when is the best time to book your flight to save the most money.
We can also help by sharing our latest trends on how consumers use mobile devices to plan and book their travel. Our database holds a wealth of information on when and how people search for flights and we’re always happy to run a quick search for you.
