Interim Results

Online Travel Corporation PLC
25 July 2001


ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION Plc

Interim Trading Statement for the six months ended 30 April 2001

Chairman's Statement

The Directors of Online Travel Corporation Plc ('OTC' or the 'Group') are
pleased to present the trading results for the six months ended 30 April 2001.
During the period OTC has made further progress towards its goal of creating a
profitable content and technology driven travel enabler, providing turnkey
web-based travel systems to major portals, media groups and corporate
organisations.

The period has seen continued growth in gross pro-forma sales to £23.3 million
(see note 5), representing overall growth of 72% on the previous year. The
gross sales yielded an increase in gross profit margin of 13.8% (2000: 12.7%),
representing an increase in actual gross profit to £3.2 million, a rise of 86%
on the same period last year. The loss of £400,000 for the six-month period
before web development and depreciation cost demonstrates the Group is close
to covering operational cost with gross profit. The Directors expect gross
sales to continue to grow, and this bodes well for the current interim period
in which the Group typically generates over 60% of its annual sales.

We expect the acquisition of EMAP Digital Travel in June to accelerate our
growth and further enhance our content and extend our customer base.


Tommaso Zanzotto

Chairman



Major Strides in OTC's Business Model

*    72% growth in pro-forma gross sales for the six months to £23.3
     million  (2000: £13.6 million)

*    86% increase in gross profit for the six months to £3.2 million
     (2000: £1.7 million) and actual gross margins up to 13.8% (2000: 12.7%)

*    Growth in unique users to 2.3 million, up over 500% on previous year

*    Acquisition cost 28 pence per user (2000: 38 pence) versus industry
     average of £4.20

*    Customer acquisition cost of £6.10 (2000: £8.10) versus industry
     average of £42.70

*    Sixty web sites operational, ten of which are for customers with a
     user base of 1 million+

*    Leisure division sales up 183% to £8.8 million (2000: £3.1 million)

*    Corporate division sales up 36% to £8.6 million (2000: £6.3 million)

*    Trade division sales up 30% to £5.1 million (2000: £3.9 million)

*    New media and incremental revenue up 130% to £0.8 million (2000: 
     £0.35 million)

*    Successful expansion into Europe and Australia

*    £5.2 million in net assets at 30 April 2001 (including £2.1 million
     in cash)

*    Acquisition and funding of EMAP Travel brands completed, creating one of   
     the largest e-travel businesses in the UK



Financial Review

Total gross sales for the Group during the six-month period to 30 April 2001,
rose 72% to £23.3 million (2000: £13.6 million). Gross profit margins
increased from 12.7% to 13.8% during the period reflecting increased sales of
higher yielding Inclusive Tour business and higher ancillary revenues.

The net loss before taxation of £1.6 million (2000 pro forma: £1.0 million) is
in line with Directors' expectations. A pro-forma comparison of revenues and
costs demonstrates growth and trends.  The reason for having to provide
pro-forma comparative figures is explained in note 5.






                                                      6 Months to   6 Months to
                                                    30 April 2001 30 April 2000
                                                        £'million     £'million

Gross Sales *                                                23.3          13.6

Gross Margin *                                               3.21          1.72

Call centre and CRM costs                                    1.41          0.69
Sales & Marketing                                            0.58          0.51
Central overhead & administration                            1.62          0.97
                                                             3.61          2.17

Loss from operations before web development                  0.40          0.45

Web development                                              0.82          0.33
Depreciation and amortisation                                0.38          0.18
                                                             1.20          0.51

Loss before tax                                              1.60          0.96

(* Includes 100% of associated companies revenues)


Call centre support and customer relationship management costs increased from
£693,000 to £1,412,000 as part of the drive to improve service levels and
conversion rates. These costs by their nature have to be made in advance of
anticipated growth and we expect this to yield higher conversion rates in the
second half of the year and reduce as a proportion of sales.

Sales and marketing costs of £580,000 (2000: £520,000), which include
strategic partners profit and revenue share, represents a reduction of 10
pence per unique user to 28 pence (2000: 38 pence) and £2.00 per transacting
customer to £6.10 (2000: £8.10), some 86% lower than the industry average of
£42.70 per customer.

General administration and overhead costs increased to £1,617,000 (2000:
£970,000) reflecting the costs of expanding the senior management team in
standing with our status as a public limited company; plus an increase in
support services to meet increased volumes. The increase also includes the
cost of implementation of back-office efficiencies that are now starting to
bear fruit. We expect further operational efficiencies from applying scalable
and robust technology solutions to our business processes.

We incurred costs of £818,000 on web development and content procurement and a
further £371,000 in depreciation as part of our planned migration away from
dependence on third party developed booking engines and improvements to our
propriety systems' technology.


Acquisitions

In June 2001, OTC acquired the assets of EMAP Digital Travel ('EDT') for £2.8
million. The purchase includes all proprietary technology and content, and the
trade of some of the UK's leading e-travel businesses, including:


i.    Bargainholidays.com, an online retailer of charter based package
      holidays,
ii.   A2Btravel.com, a scheduled flight information and travel site,
iii.  1Ski.com and Boardit.com, specialist winter sports sites, and
iv.   Ferrybooker.com, a proprietary online ferry booking service.


In the financial year ending 31 March 2001, EDT generated gross sales of £14.2
million with gross profits of £2.5 million. EDT specialist sites, particularly
the charter based package holiday content, compliments the OTC market
proposition to the sixty plus travel sites currently operated by OTC. EDT
sites will continue to operate as separate brands, and these sites are already
being enhanced by OTC technology, product and supporting infrastructure. All
sites are expected to benefit from the cross-sale of these complimentary
products. The acquisition has created one of the largest e-travel groups in
the UK, with over 2.0 million unique users and over 300,000 transacting
customers.

During the six months ended 30 April 2001, OTC acquired Viva Travel Dun
Laoghaire Limited to provide local travel product and to service our growing
number of Irish ISP and media partners in Ireland. Additionally, OTC acquired
50% of Breakaway Travel Club Pty Ltd to develop the travel trade concessions
sector in Australia.


Operational Review

Leisure

During the period OTC launched a number of major new Strategic Partner sites
including a multi-channel package holiday service for Expedia.co.uk (January),
a full service travel site for Telegraph.co.uk (February) and new sites in
April with the ISP Supanet, the classified portal Yell, the shopping portal
Shopsmart, Ireland's second largest digital phone provider Esat Digifone, and
the Digital TV Operator Netvoyager.

OTC has also enhanced its relationships with leading portals, including a new
two-year relationship with Btinternet and BTOpenworld as part of which BT Plc
became a strategic investor in OTC. We also have enhanced contracts with
Freeserve and Virgin.net and Tiscali, incorporating LineOne, WorldOnline and
Liberty Surf. OTC has also agreed to supply a multi-channel package service to
Deckchair.com.

New media revenues continue to grow, but the downturn in online advertising
industry rates has resulted in a lower than expected level of growth in this
area. The Directors are pursuing new avenues to make up for this slow down and
expect increased new media revenues from the sites acquired from EMAP.

The period has seen considerable increase in the number of users and customers
and enhancement in functionality, content and product range have increased the
products and revenue via partner sites. Recent deals including with EMAP have
widened our customer base and enhanced the product and content, and we look
forward to successful integration into OTC own and OTC customer sites. This
has strengthened our proposition and we have experienced increased interest
from portals, media groups and large retail organisations as a direct result.


Corporate

The corporate travel sector has continued to expand with a number of new joint
venture agreements or service contracts being signed, with, amongst others,
Gartmore Investment Management, Medical Research Councils, Laura Ashley, SMI
Conferences, UK Atomic Energy Authority and Strategic Rail Authority. We have
also successfully integrated the business formerly managed by Corporate Wings
Travel Club Ltd.

The division has moved to mixed structures on pricing to reflect changes in
airline commissions and gross profit margins are holding at just over 8%. The
general decline in corporate travel spend in the UK has seen a slow down in
the rate of growth in revenues from certain areas of corporate travel,
particularly amongst US based advertising companies, and the Directors
continue to seek new accounts to compensate.

The Group's plan to cross-sell its leisure travel offering to employees of its
corporate travel customers continues, though take-up rates remain relatively
slow.


Trade

The formal launch by British Airways of the BA Preferred Travel Agents Travel
Club was delayed until May 2001. All six of the major Travel Trade web sites
were redesigned and re-launched during the period.

In total OTC currently has in excess of 70,000 members of its various Trade
Travel clubs. The migration to a pure web based service continues to grow and
move into wider range of eligible industry employees grown with pending launch
of Travel Industry Club (TIC) for the 2 million plus employees in the sector.

Since the end of the period, the Joint Venture in Australia has agreed to
supply all Accor Hotel staff in Australia with travel benefits, and this is
indicative of the Global reach of online trade travel concessions.


Technology Review

In November the Group rolled out Version 1.0 of its new flight booking system
across all of the OTC and partner sites. This made an immediate impact on
sales, and has produced significant volumes since the beginning of the new
season in January. Tied to the release of flights and hotels was the release
of our online bookable holiday system in February, which uses the existing
infrastructure, but packages flights and hotels at Inclusive Tour prices.
Version 2.0 of the flight-booking engine will be released by the end of July
and should lead to further improvements in conversion rates.

We also released our online hotel-booking product using the Gulliver's (GTA)
hotel database. This has proved very popular and we are now working to
increase both the number of properties and number of vendors bookable through
the system.

In March we released our car hire booking system, which has increased our
sales of car hires significantly. The car system links directly to the Holiday
Autos' reservations system.

Many of the internal systems have been enhanced during this time, including
our CRM systems for order processing and customer database management. We also
released a new holiday building content management tool, which allows data
entry staff or external product providers to release new packages to any web
site within minutes.

In order to cope with the growing number of users each month, the web-hosting
infrastructure has been significantly enhanced


Share Capital

The consideration for the EDT assets values EDT (including goodwill) at £2.8
million and was satisfied via a vendor placing of 9,200,000 new ordinary
shares in OTC issued at  £0.25 per share plus £0.5 million in loan notes
redeemable in November 2002. In addition, a further 800,000 new ordinary
shares at £0.25 per share were allotted pursuant to a cash placing. The
10,000,000 new ordinary shares were admitted to the Alternative Investment
Market of the London Stock Exchange on Tuesday 19 June 2001. Since the
period-end a further 630,000 new ordinary shares of 1 pence were issued and
allotted for cash at 25 pence per share.


Directors

On 2 February 2001, OTC announced the appointment of a new non-executive
chairman, Tommaso Zanzotto. Mr Zanzotto has extensive experience in global
travel and financial service organizations with previous roles including
President International of American Express Travel Related Services and
Chairman and CEO of Hilton International.


Outlook

The period has shown considerable organic growth on the previous year, and
gross margins significantly higher than the comparable period last year.

The growth in gross margins has been achieved with a proportionate reduction
in costs as a percentage, primarily from economies of scale and technology
driven costs savings. The Directors expect such technology driven cost savings
to have a larger impact on results in the future.

The acquisition of EMAP travel brands has made OTC one of the largest e-travel
groups in the UK, and we will continue to explore other opportunities to
consolidate the market and add revenues and content.

We look forward to reporting continued growth in margins at reduced costs as a
percentage to drive the Group to early profitability.


ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION PLC


CONSOLIDATED PROFIT AND LOSS ACCOUNT

For 6-month period ended 30 April 2001 (2-month period ended 30 April 2000)


                                                     2001            2000
                                                     £'000           £'000
                                                  (unaudited)     (unaudited)

Turnover                                             20,302            4,048

Group and share of associates
Turnover (excluding share of associates)             16,487            2,850

Continuing

Acquisitions                                          1,061              849
                                                     17,548            3,699
Cost of sales                                       (14,858)          (3,275)

Gross profit                                          2,690              424

Selling and distribution costs                        (2,161)           (436)
Administration costs                                  (2,393)           (497)
Other operating income                                   252              14

Operation (loss)/profit
Continuing                                            (1,622)           (532)
Acquisitions                                              11              27

Total operating loss                                  (1,612)           (495)

Share of operating loss of Associated Companies          (25)              -

                                                      (1,637)           (495)

Interest receivable                                       42               -

Interest payable                                          (3)            (10)

Group loss on ordinary activities before              (1,598)           (505)
taxation

Taxation                                                   -               -

Retained loss for the financial period/year           (1,598)           (505)

Loss per share                                       Pence           Pence

- basic                                              (2.3)           (4.5)

- fully diluted                                      (2.1)           (4.2)




ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION PLC

GROUP BALANCE SHEET

As at 30 April 2001




                                   2001                  2000
                                   £'000      £'000      £'000      £'000
                                  (unaudited) (unaudited)(unaudited) (unaudited)
Fixed assets

Intangible assets - goodwill                  2,150                 2,130
Tangible assets                               1,392                 831
Investment in associated companies                  189                    40
                                              3,731                 3,001


Current assets
Debtors                            4,848                 2,625
Cash at bank and in hand                 2,102                  900
                                   6,950                 3,525
Creditors: amounts falling due
within one year                         (5,452)              (5,572)
                                   
Net current assets/(liabilities)                  1,498                   (47)
                                              5,229                 2,954
Creditors: amounts falling due
after more than one year                              -                  (145)

                                                  5,229                 2,809




Capital and reserves (equity)                

Called up share capital                       691                   115
Share premium account                         7,125                 1,700
Capital reserve                               1,499                 1,499
Profit and loss account - deficit             (4,086)               (505)
Equity shareholders' funds
                                              5,229                 2,809



The Board approved the interim financial statements on 24 July 2001.



Notes:

1.   The accounting policies that have been applied to the unaudited results
     are consistent with the latest published audited accounts.



2.   The Directors do not propose to pay a dividend at this time.



3.   Basic earnings/(loss) per share has been calculated on the following basis:


            Earnings/(loss) per share                     6 Month       6 Month
                                                      Period ended  Period ended
                                                    30 April 2001 30 April 2000


Attributable profit/(loss) (£'000)                        (1,598)         (505)

Average number of ordinary shares in issue ('000)      68,810,406    11,240,186

Number of ordinary shares in
issue and over which options                           74,768,442    12,026,973
have been granted

Basic earnings/(loss) per share                           (2.32)p        (4.5)p
(pence)

Fully diluted earnings/(loss)                             (2.14)p        (4.2)p
per share (pence)


4.   A copy of the Interim Trading Statement for the 6 months ended 30 April
     2001 is due to be sent to all shareholders on or about Tuesday 31 July
     2001. Copies of this announcement will be available, free of charge for a
     period of one month, from the company's Nominated Adviser:

     Noble & Company Limited
     1 Frederick's Place
     London EC2R 8AB


5.   OTC was formed on 11 January 2000 and, on 2 March 2000, OTC acquired the
     whole of the issued share capital of Online Travel Services Limited (OTS), 
     the principal trading subsidiary of the Group. The consolidated profit and 
     loss account for the 2 months period ended 30 April 2000 reflects the      
     Group's trading activity from 2 March 2000. This does not fully reflect the
     Group's underlying actual trading activity for the six months ended on 30  
     April 2000.  Accordingly 'pro-forma' amounts refer to total group trading  
     for the six months ended 30 April 2000, as if all acquisitions had taken   
     place on 1 November 1999, and include the turnover of associated companies.

     Pro-forma gross profit for the 6 months ended 30 April 2001 amounted to    
     £3.2 million. (2000 - £1.7 million). Pro-forma expenditure of £4.8 million 
     (2000 - £2.7 million) over the period was made up of:


     *         £1.4 million on call centre support and customer relationship
               management

     *         £0.6 million on sales and marketing including partner profit and
               revenue shares

     *         £1.6 million on administration and support services, including   
               the strengthening of the senior management team and supporting   
               infrastructure to support anticipated growth.

     *         £1.2 million on web development, depreciation and systems
               infrastructure


     Pro-forma net loss before taxation for the year was £1.6 million (2000 -   
     £1.0 million).



For further information, please contact:

OTC:                                       Tel [phone]
Mark Jones, Managing Director
Robert Falkner, Finance Director


Durlacher Corporation Plc:                 Tel [phone]
Peter Redmond
Dru Edmonstone


Noble & Company Limited                    Tel [phone]
Chris Barker, Senior Manager


25 July 2001



END