Travelzoo-owned Fly.com will launch a dedicated German site by the end of March 2010 - but bigger developments are set to come with confirmation that car hire and hotels are now firmly on the agenda.
Fly.com currently has sites for the US and the UK markets and will unveil its first non-English language platform in Germany "imminently", says Brian Clark, senior vice president and general manager for the fledgling service.
More importantly is a hint that adding more channels to the service has become a serious consideration with Clark suggesting car hire, hotels and package holidays may be added to the site by the end of the year.
The comments come on the back of an earnings report from the Travelzoo Inc mothership this week when outgoing Travelzoo CEO Holger Bartel admitted the young metasearch site had incurred significant losses in its first year (Fly.com was unveiled in Beta on February 9 2009).
Despite the startup costs, Bartel says the metasearch business remains attractive and the priority for 2010 is to grow the Fly.com audience and revenue, although for the moment it remains a fraction of the wider revenue pot at Travelzoo.
Clark says the division will have up to 15 staffers by the summer of 2010.
Interestingly, Clark says he is "very pleased with where we are" in terms of overall traffic for the site - citing Compete figures which indicate between 500K and 700K uniques a month - but Bartel was noted as saying in the earnings call that traffic was less than hoped for.
Although Fly.com has managed in Europe to secure low cost carrier giant Ryanair, one of more traditionally difficult airlines to attract to metasearch, it still pursuing Southwest in the US alongside every other meta player.