Lastminute still top dog

Lastminute.com is still dominating the UK online travel agency sector according to the latest statistics from Hitwise. The website has retained its leading position, with an 11.5% share of visits in the month of December, up from a 9% share in Autumn 2003. Lastminute has extended its lead on Expedia, which takes second position with a 9.85% share of the visits. Despite being plagued by negative publicity, the beleagured travel group, MyTravel still held onto third place with a 4.22% share of visits. Consistent with results throughout 2003, ebookers.com, Teletext Holidays, Cheapflights, Thomson Holidays and Airline Network all appeared in the top ten. There was one new entry to the top ten UK travel agency websites – the Online Travel Company, which ranked ninth with a 2.45% share of visits. According to Hitwise, OTC first entered the top top in the last week of November 2003. For more information about Hitwise statistics, please contact Jannie Cahill, Hitwise UK Ltd, Tel: +44 (0)20 7378 3619; E-mail: [email protected] Information supplied to TravelMole by Hitwise, the global leader in real-time competitive intelligence, providing businesses with unique and actionable business information to maximise ROI. Each day, Hitwise monitors how over 25 million global Internet users interact with over 450,000 online businesses across 160 categories. Hitwise measures the most popular websites, profiles the demographics of visitors to these sites, as well as analysing where traffic is coming from and going to.