Online agents losing out as bookings go direct

WTM Special Report: Consumers are increasingly going direct to hotel and airline websites at the expense of online travel agencies.

According to the latest statistics released by web intelligence firm, Hitwise, travel websites continue to take a larger share of visits to websites across all sectors, but this is buoyed by growth in visits to travel suppliers, rather than travel agents.

Speaking at the CIMTIG and Designate co-ordinated debate at this year’s World Travel Market, Hitwise director of research, Heather Hopkins said that the share of total UK online visits taken by travel grew by 8 per cent in October year-on-year, to take a 4.5 per cent slice of all UK visits to the web.

But she added: “Suppliers like hotels and airlines have been fuelling this growth for travel while visits to online travel agents have remained stable.”

Visits to hotel websites grew 18 per cent year-on-year to October 2005, while visits to airline sites grew 17 per cent and to car rental sites grew 16 per cent.

Commenting on the statistics, Designate head of strategy, Craig Hanna said: “That implies to me that people are learning how to use the web better and find what they want.”

Hopkins added that the growth of visits to travel suppliers’ sites was also fuelled by massive marketing campaigns, from the likes of ba.com and InterContinental Hotel Group, pushing more visitors direct.

But she said online travel agents were also losing visitors to travel suppliers’ sites. “People are going to online travel agents, finding the flight or hotel they want, then going direct to the supplier to buy it in the hope of saving some money,” she said.

Hopkins accepted that the leading online agents still take the lion’s share of online travel traffic, but added: “A lot of pressure has been put onto online travel agents by these travel suppliers strengthening their brands.”

According to Hitwise, of the online agencies, Expedia and Lastminute.com take the top two spots for share of UK visits, the former taking number one spot since January 2005, while Thomas Cook and Thomson’s websites come in at third and fourth, demonstrating increasing popularity for their websites over the past year.

Similarly, the share of visits to airline websites has shifted, with the top three, Easyjet, Ryanair, and British Airways, losing share of UK visits to other websites such as Jet2.com and Thomsonfly.com, which have both more than doubled their visits in the past year.

Report by Ginny McGrath