TRAVEL search company Skyscanner has launched a recruitment drive to fill 100 roles in Scotland by the end of 2013 and has revealed plans to open a further office in Glasgow.
Skyscanner employs 150 staff at its new headquarters in Edinburgh, with an additional 20 employees based in Singapore and Beijing, after it opened an office in the Chinese capital last month.
This month the company revealed that its revenues had risen 40.2 per cent year-on-year as result of growth in its Asian markets.
In the seven months to the end of 2011, the company made £12.5 million in revenues and returned a £2.4m pre-tax profit.
Gareth Williams, Skyscanner’s co-founder and chief executive, has said he expects turnover to hit £30m this year. The company added that 80 per cent of its income is generated outside the UK.
Williams said: “Our ambition is to be the world’s number one travel search site over the next few years, and we want to attract the best talent to help us get there.
“Edinburgh is a great base for us to build from and really deserves to be known as a leading international tech hub.
“We’re seeing the emergence of more and more tech start-ups with ambitions on a global scale.
“As a recruiter, we benefit from being in such a cosmopolitan city and having a world-leading computer science and business school on our doorstep.”
Skyscanner recently moved into its Edinburgh headquarters at Quartermile, and the office has capacity for 300 staff.
The company plans to open a Glasgow office next year and is recruiting technical development and marketing specialists.
Williams said: “There is a wide range of talent across the Scottish central belt and we are adding the Glasgow office to reflect that.
“While the Glasgow office will be small to begin with, we expect to see it grow over time.”
Earlier this year Skyscanner signed a deal with Baidu, China’s largest search engine, to offer an international flight search to its 440 million users. Recently the company said China accounts for 15 per cent of its traffic, around 4.5 million visits a month.
The company, which was founded in 2001, announced that 11 million people had downloaded its “app”. The free application was first launched on the iPhone in February last year and is now available on iPhone, iPad, Android, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and devices running Windows 8.
In 2008 the firm raised £2.5m from venture capital firm Scottish Equity Partners.
Skyscanner’s technology handles 650 million flight prices every day, using real time information from 600 airlines, in 30 languages and a range of currencies.
Founders Williams, Barry Smith and Bonamy Grimes said the company is the number one travel search website in Europe and number three worldwide, receiving 30 million visits a month.