Nixon pulls out of Simonseeks

Simon Nixon, the entrepreneur behind Moneysupermarket.com, has walked away from his online travel venture after two years saying the business model was "simply not viable".

In a letter to its Simonseek's writers, Mr Nixon said: "Consumers are not currently ready to pay for professionally written travel content online and the amounts generated through hotel bookings and page impressions are not significant enough."

The group made six redundancies last month and Mr Nixon said yesterday he was to pull his backing or the site.

Yet he added that some of the remaining management team "are currently discussing how they can continue to operate on a smaller scale". Simonseeks was set up as an online travel guide in June 2008, on a revenue share model with its authors.