eDreams launches operations in France

European travel website eDreams today launched its new service in France. The company started trading at the height of the dot-com boom in March in Spain and Italy, in the UK in July and with the launch of edreams.fr is now operative in four European countries.

Nathalie Biderman, MD of eDreams France, said the time was right to move into France because the company has already proved its business model in Spain, Italy and the UK. She said: "Evidently it is a tougher climate for dot-coms now, but our investors are 100 per cent behind us, and will continue to help us with strategy, recruitment and building partnerships, because they trust us to make a success." eDreams backers include 3I, Apax Partners and Atlas Commerce. It already claims to be the market leader in travel e-tail for the Spanish and Italian markets. Javier Perez-Tenessa, Spanish CEO, said the move to France would require a different strategy, including selling its search engine technology to other businesses. "Clearly both the UK and France have much more mature markets than Spain and Italy, and we can't use the first mover advantage that we benefited from there." You can see an interview with Perez Tenessa on silicon.com's European Entrpreneur microsite on http://www.silicon.com/EE2000/intro.htm