LONDON, 8 March 2006 - The world's largest student and youth travel organisation, STA Travel, has turned to WebTrends Inc., the global web analytics leader, to maximise customer conversion and provide consistent and accurate reporting across all of its global web sites.

STA Travel has over 20 web sites that enable visitors to book flights, hostels and rail or bus travel online or book appointments with in-store consultants, as well as access informative editorial on gap years, tours and destinations. STA Travel is now able to leverage WebTrends' expertise in the travel sector, to gain detailed behavioural insight into its site visitors around the world and in-depth performance reporting for all online initiatives.

All of STA's online campaigns across its multiple sites will be tracked by WebTrends® On Demand, correlating campaign performance to business revenue in order to improve return on investment. In addition, WebTrends sophisticated navigation analysis will enable STA to track how visitors journey through its sites, allowing them to improve content effectiveness for increased customer conversion and retention.

A key objective for STA Travel when selecting WebTrends On Demand was the flexibility and support it could offer, particularly when it came to reporting on a global scale. STA Travel is currently undertaking a worldwide redesign of its sites and by engaging with WebTrends at the initial creation stage, they have already been able to draw on WebTrends expertise, best practices and solution flexibility, in order to specify complex reporting requirements.

"A substantial level of our revenue is generated through the net due to the profile of our customers and the fact that they prefer to purchase travel online," said Paul Shiu, senior business analyst, eCommerce at STA Travel. "A strong web presence is crucial to our business revenue and strategy, and therefore we require an in-depth understanding of our web visitors and customers in order to ensure this business value is maximised. A key benefit of WebTrends On Demand is its ability to provide sophisticated and accurate reporting, allowing us to have actionable insight into campaign performance and ROI."

WebTrends has in-depth knowledge of the travel sector and understands the highly competitive online landscape. This, combined with the proven ability of WebTrends On Demand to offer insight into the navigation and conversion of visitors to STA Travel sites, will enable the company to make better informed and reliable decisions to increase the effectiveness of its web sites.

"STA Travel understands the significant impact an online presence combined with effective web analytics has in terms of growth and revenue, which is one reason they turned to WebTrends industry-leading analytics," said Nick Sharp, vice president and general manager of EMEA, WebTrends Inc. "However, even better than our superior technology, was STA's acknowledgment of WebTrends' deep understanding of the travel industry and its challenges and drivers, which gave them the confidence to know that we could serve their needs well into the future."

About STA Travel

STA Travel, the world's largest travel company for students and young people, has helped over 6 million customer's since the company began in 1979 by offering innovative travel products and services which promote the excitement, adventure, surprise and thrill of travel. With over 3000 staff and 450 branches operating in 80 countries, STA travel caters for the continually rise of international travel and the increasing number of young people taking significant journeys throughout the world. It offers customers a choice of booking channels—walk-in retail, call centre and internet to enable them to contact and transact with STA Travel from anywhere in the world, at anytime. Through its online site, customers are able to organize all their travel needs including flights, land products i.e. tours and bus passes and insurance. For more information, visit www.statravel.co.uk.

About WebTrends

Thousands of web-smart organizations worldwide, including more than half of the Fortune and Global 500, rely on WebTrends to improve their web site conversions and optimize their marketing performance for maximum return on investment. As the worldwide market leader for web analytics, WebTrends has become the trusted standard not only for award-winning technology, but also for a full range of consulting services and unmatched industry expertise. By delivering accurate and actionable metrics through both on-demand and software options, WebTrends ensures that its customers are positioned for both immediate and long-term success with a solution that can adapt to ever-changing business and technical requirements. For more information, visit www.webtrends.com.

WebTrends and WebTrends On Demand are trademarks or registered trademarks of WebTrends Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other trademarks mentioned are the property of their respective owners.

Media Contacts

Cherry Giles / Thomas Flisher
Octopus Communications (for WebTrends)
01753 672 755
webtrends@octopuscomms.net