Essential Travel Press Centre

Essential Travel is one of the UK's leading independent online travel extras providers. Since 2001, over 2.5 million British holiday makers have enjoyed peace of mind travelling with our fully comprehensive, competitively priced travel insurance policies*, as well as priority access to the most sought after car parks, hotels and lounges at all major airports across the UK.

Essential Travel - Innovative

We built one of the UK's first online quote-comparison engines. We're also competitive: constantly monitoring the market to ensure we only offer the most reliable, comprehensive, good-value products - available instantly and securely through our website. That's one of the reasons we attract over 350,000 new customers a year: in fact with gross sales in excess of £20 million, Essential Travel was recently declared one of the Top 100 fastest growing companies in the UK˚.

Essential Travel - Independent

Our six founding directors are experienced, hands-on experts in their fields, each offering informed opinions on developments within their sectors:

Stuart Bensusan - Sales Director (Email Me): ‘Pregnancy is an issue which comes up more than any other. We get roughly 60 calls a day from women in their first trimester worried pregnancy counts as a ‘pre-existing medical condition' and they'll need special travel insurance. They won't: with a few exceptions, 99% of Mums-to-be are fine, and covered by standard travel insurance policies'.

Simon Purnell - Commercial Director (Email Me): ‘Booking airport parking has to be the least exciting part of anyone's holiday, but book a week's parking at - say - Heathrow a month before you go, and it will cost £47.95+. Book a couple of days before you leave however, and that price jumps to £79.95. Over £30 - that's a significant saving'.

Stephen Smith - Finance Director (Email Me): ‘Excesses are the nasty sting in the ‘cheap policy' tail. Comparison sites, like Moneysupermarket, compare policy prices across the board, but not their excesses. It's only when you're faced with an excess of up to £250 - and yes, those kind of excessive excesses really do exist - that you realise the policy was anything but a bargain'.

Richard Hannan - PPC & IT Director (Email Me): 'We often take the development of the UK's web environment for granted. So many leading entrepreneurs, domainers and developers are Brits, only the US and Germany come close to us. In fact, given our impact in Germany and the US, I'd say we're right at the top. When the Asian markets get to where we are now ... the effect is going to be profound'.

Philip Jordan - SEO/Marketing & Content Director (Email Me): ‘A survey of 1000 of our customers revealed holiday makers' greatest fear is Lost Luggage: 75% of them told us they genuinely worried their bags wouldn't be there on arrival. Despite that, 90% admitted they never pack a spare set of clothes or toiletries in their hand luggage. High Street deregulation and the rise of the internet, mean travel insurance has literally never been cheaper. Even so - as a father of two, who recently wasted a day's holiday waiting for lost bags to turn up - I urge all holiday makers to use common sense precautions as well as travel insurance'.

Essential Travel - Safe & Secure

We operate throughout the UK from our central London offices, including a dedicated in-house customer service team, answering customers' queries and taking telephone bookings. All our systems are designed in-house; none of our processes are outsourced and we don't share any of our databases. We guarantee our customers a service they can trust - at a price they'll appreciate - available instantly and securely through our website.

Essential Travel - Good Value

As an online business, we have low over-heads - which means offering our customers the highest possible levels of cover at the lowest possible prices. And we're independently owned, not a teeny cog in a struggling financial juggernaut. We take the time to provide a personal service, and we're not going to pull benefits out from under travellers, just as they need them most. As director Stuart Bensusan points out: ‘There'll be no cover creep: as the credit crunch gets crunchier, you won't suddenly find your luggage isn't covered, no matter what happens at Terminal 5'. .

Essential Travel - Handy

Our unique, online My Account facility is a password-protected, security encrypted area of our site, which allows customers to store, review, renew or change their personal or policy details, any time they like - free of charge. Moving house; need to change the date of your airport parking; add someone to your policy, or simply check when it's up for renewal ...? Log on for instant access - it couldn't be safer or easier.

Essential Travel - Informs, Inspires

We recognise that travel extras - insurance, airport parking, hotels ... - aren't exactly sexy. They are useful though, so our website is packed with useful, practical advice and information - whether you're fly-driving across Florida with the family; backpacking around Asia on your Gap Year or travelling to Brussels for a last minute business meeting. We're constantly posting new travel blogs and tips, we also have an extensive range of handy destination and activity guides packed with up to-the-minute insider tips, as well as daily travel news and features - all written and updated by our dedicated team of professional travel writers and specialists. Essential Travel is an accredited Google News Source, and our site receives an average of 200,000 unique visitors a month. To find out more go to http://insurance.essentialtravel.co.uk

Essential Travel - Directors' Biogs

Stuart Bensusan, Sales Director (Aged 39)

12 years hands-on experience in the Travel Insurance industry, Stuart is an expert in the travel insurance and underwriting fields. Prior to co-founding Essential Travel, he worked as Healthcare Advisor for BUPA and was Business Development Manager at Primary Insurance Group.

Stephen Smith, Finance Director (Aged 41)

Former commercial airline pilot, as Business Development Manager at APH (Airport Parking and Hotels), Stephen steered the company through the burgeoning budget airline boom. He was integral to their growth from small family business to one of the largest travel extras companies in the UK.

Simon Purnell, Commercial Director (Aged 41)

Prior to co-founding Essential Travel, Simon cut his teeth working as an account manager for Chauntry, the leading online/call centre reservation system supplier, and Head of Product & Ecommerce for APH. He is a transport logistics expert, and demon at working out how to get the most from your holiday money.

Richard Hannan, Paid Search, IT & Facilities Director (Aged 35)

Richard had extensive experience running both a web design and an IT support business prior to Essential Travel. Before this he held a number of positions at IBM from SQL programmer, and business analyst to server support. Merging advanced web design and IT support techniques with Search Engine Marketing have been core to his position managing Essential Travel's technical systems and services.

Philip Jordan, SEO/Marketing & Content Director (Aged 35)

With a fast-track career in finance, commodities trading and medical technology, in the late 1990s Philip turned his expertise to online commerce. ‘Not interested in dot.com craziness, but in building a solid company', he was the architect of Essential Travel's original online systems, ‘building every database and system - line by line of code - from scratch'. He is an expert in SEO ... and family travel.

Matthew Jones, Director (Aged 35)

A search engine guru, prior to starting Online Essentials, Matt worked for Omega Digital Media - an internet design agency.

Press contacts: Jennifer Cox or Jennie Sheldon

Tel: 020 7087 0458 email:press@essentialtravel.co.uk

Essential Travel is authorised and regulated by the Financial Services Authority membership number 300175

Essential Travel Ltd. Registered in England and Wales, Registered No. 4331342 Registered Office, 21, Ganton Street, London, W1F 9BN

Tel: 0207 0870 458
Fax: 0871 750 1653
www.essentialtravel.co.uk

* underwritten by Axa Insurance UK
˚Real Business magazine, April 2008