Statement re Trading Update

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                        
      

6 OCTOBER 2003

                         ONLINE TRAVEL CORPORATION PLC                         

                                TRADING UPDATE                                 

The board of Online Travel Corporation plc ('OTC' or the 'Company'), the travel
technology and distribution group, announces a trading update prior to the end
of OTC's current financial year. It is currently expected that preliminary
results for the year ending 31 October 2003 will be released during January
2004.

Overview

2003 has been characterised by difficult trading conditions and the impact of
external events. Despite this OTC has continued to grow overall gross sales and
has developed further the automation and flexibility of its products.

Recent enhancements to our systems that allow major third party travel
companies to offer e-commerce channels to their customers have strengthened our
position in the online travel sector and will allow us to leverage further our
investment in technology.

The contract to provide e-commerce solutions for Thomas Cook, one of the
world's leading travel groups, announced earlier today, significantly endorses
the quality and flexibility of OTC's systems and also demonstrates the
Company's progress in becoming a major supplier of e-commerce solutions to the
travel industry. 

The board of OTC is confident that this and the benefits of increasing
automation will underpin the Company's performance in 2004.

Sales

The sales growth momentum experienced by the travel sector post the Iraq war
eased during the very hot summer months and, as a result, expectations of
overall gross sales for the current year have been revised

Despite the difficult trading conditions, the direct leisure business continued
to attract customers in 2003 due to the flexibility, quality and range of its
products. We expect to report overall growth in sales in this division of
approximately 41 per cent compared to last year.

We are pleased with the success of our umbrella brand, onlinetravel.com, as
more and more customers recognise the value and convenience of our
build-your-own holiday product. We intend to increase the marketing support
given to the onlinetravel.com brand in 2004.

The business travel sector continues to be challenging. Several new contracts
in the pipeline are indicative of a recovery, however, we expect to record a
decline in gross sales in this division in 2003 of approximately four per cent
over the previous year.

Gross margins

Gross margins in the travel sector have been under pressure as travel suppliers
look at ways to reduce their own costs. Whilst our gross margins for the second
half of the year show an improvement on the 12.8 per cent achieved in the first
half of the year, overall gross margins for the year will show a slight decline
on the previous year.

We believe that preferred status with leading travel suppliers is therefore
crucial to maintain margins. In this regard we are pleased to announce that our
British Airways Preferred Partnership has been extended until March 2005. Our
preferred supplier status extends to many leading airlines and hotel suppliers
and is an indication of the added value that access to our large and diverse
demographic customer base can bring to travel suppliers.

We are encouraged by the continued migration from retail to higher margin
merchant bookings for our hotel business, and the increase in customers using
our build-your-own holiday product that generates higher margins than flight
only sales. 

Costs

OTC is, fundamentally, an automated business and we are continually seeking to
reduce the manual interventions necessary to fulfil transactions and,
therefore, to minimise our costs. In this regard, new technology to automate
payment reconciliation and ticket fulfilment will be rolled out this month.

As a result of this increasing automation, we expect to reduce headcount and
consolidate the number of locations from which we operate. Whilst this exercise
will result in some exceptional costs in the last quarter of the current year,
we expect to achieve annualised cost savings of approximately £1.8 million in
2004.

Commenting on trading, Mark Jones, Chief Executive, said:

'Today's contract with Thomas Cook is a significant achievement for OTC. While
concentrating on growing our revenues through our media sites and through third
party travel business, we will continue to remove costs across our business. We
now have a solid, automated business infrastructure in place which offers out
customers a quick and efficient service. We will continue to consolidate and
strengthen our market position which will place us in a good position in to
reap benefits in 2004 from our investments.  I look forward to updating our
shareholders further in due course.'

                                                                               

For further information, please contact:

Online Travel Corporation plc                                                 
                                                                              
Mark Jones, Managing Director (8am - 10am)            Tel [phone]
                                                                              
Mark Simpkins, Finance Director (10am onwards)        Tel [phone]
                                                                              
CardewChancery                                                                
                                                                              
Richard Fallowfield                                  Tel: [phone]
                                                                              
Jeanette Hamster                                     Tel: [phone]