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Travel ‘to take 5% of all internet visits’
Almost five per cent of all UK internet visits could be on travel-related websites this year.
The forecast comes from Hitwise, the internet monitoring service, which says the online travel sector is continuing to shift business away from high street travel agents onto the internet.
New figures from Hitwise show that visits to travel-related website have grown by 27% in the year to April.
The start of the year saw the highest recorded market share of internet visits in the travel sector.
Hitwise said: “Whilst the first quarter of 2003 was doubtless a turbulent period for the travel sector with the outbreak of SARS and the war in Iraq, travel online has shown consistent growth and similar trends in 2004. This indicates that the impact – at least on the propensity of UK consumers to look for travel online – was not severely impacted.”
A record one in 25 internet visits was to a travel website in January – traditionally the peak booking month for overseas holidays. While visits fell between February and April, the sector still represented 3.7% of all online visits last month, according to Hitwise.
The company’s general manager Simon Chamberlain said: “Given the trend we saw in 2003, we can expect four months of strong activity for the online travel sector.
“Last year we saw an uplift of around 33% between April and August, and a similar increase this year would see almost 5% of all UK internet visits going to travel-related website.”
Expedia, which is running a £12 million brand advertising campaign, has been the most popular online travel agency site since January accounting for more than one in every 10 visits, maintaining a lead over lastminute.com.
But easyJet remains the top brand searched for by consumers in the overall travel sector in the past three months, followed by Ryanair.
Mr Chamberlain said: “With search engines driving more than a third of visits to the travel sector, understanding the brands people are searching for is a great way to assess the relative strength of brands online. In those terms ‘easyJet’ continues to be front of mind for UK consumers, with ‘Ryanair’ and ’British Airways’ just behind, showing clear dominance of low cost carriers on the web.”
Report by Phil Davies
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