Europe's biggest online travel agency, Ebookers, (which sells package holidays, flights and car rentals over the Internet in 11 European countries) has just announced its financial results.

The company said that its losses after tax for the three months to September 2002 came in at £2m, ($2.9m) down from £3.5m during the same period one year earlier, while sales jumped 58% on the year to £77.9m and is firmly on track to start turning a profit after tax.

They have kept costs under control by moving their ticket and payment processing operation to India, where running costs are lower. The firm estimates that having its back office operation in India rather than Europe saves it about £1m every three months.

Ebookers' strong growth in sales partly reflected growing demand for package holidays, car rentals, and hotel bookings, the company said. It added that it had benefited from the success of no-frills airlines such as Ryanair and Easyjet, saying they had encouraged more people to go on holidays, and had helped popularise online travel bookings.