ZUJI’s releases online Travel Trend Report for January – June

Online travel agent ZUJI Australia www.zuji.com.au has released its bi-annual report examining online booking trends in Asia Pacific for the first half of 2008, with the report revealsing the latest booking trends for hotels and flights, when people book and how they pay for travel booked online.

Australian travel trends identify some interesting and perhaps surprising choices as preferred destinations both domestically and internationally.

Peter Smith, General Manager, ZUJI Australia, comments, “Hot on the heels of this report recent independent figures show Australia now tops the charts worldwide with internet penetration (70.2% of the population which is now higher than USA).

Of all online shoppers in Australia, 53% have purchased an air ticket and 47% accommodation online and the continued growth in online travel bookings with a 54% increase over the 3 years just can’t be ignored.”

Top trends identified by ZUJI for Australians booking travel online:

Hotel Bookings:

Hong Kong hotels remain most popular with Aussie travellers when it comes to online bookings.

Domestic destinations are also popular, with Melbourne ‘beating’ Sydney in popularity by a whisker, with Cairns close behind. This trend has not changed since last year.

Other overseas destinations such as Singapore, Japan, Thailand and USA are appealing to travellers booking accommodation online.

Despite the Olympics, Beijing’s popularity teeters at only #20 most popular destination for travellers booking accommodation online.

Aussies take an ‘early bird’ approach to hotel bookings online. Almost half (46%) of hotel reservations are booked online more than one month ahead of check-in.

Any day is a good day to book a hotel online for Australians: Tuesdays and Thursdays are the most popular days of the week to book a hotel online (16% of hotels are booked on that day in Australia).

Aussies also like to book hotels online during the weekend with a quarter (25%) of all ZUJI Australia’s hotel bookings made on Saturdays and Sundays.

Flight Bookings:

Auckland remains the number one international flight destination for Aussie travellers.

Hong Kong, the most popular city for hotel bookings, now sits at third most popular flight destination ahead of Bangkok and Singapore, which occupied third and fourth places last year.

Aussies continue to travel far and wide, with ‘Top 20’ international flight destinations spanning the globe – everywhere from North to South Asia, to USA and Europe.

Again, despite the Olympics, Beijing did not make the ‘Top 20’ as an international flight destination.

Sydney and Melbourne attract most domestic visitors by air, with Perth, Adelaide, and Brisbane also favourites with the locals.

As a domestic destination, Canberra just doesn’t rate. Despite city dwellers all over Australia visiting each other, Canberra does not make a ‘Top 5’ mention, despite its capital status.

Darwin and Hobart also fail to rate as a popular spot for Aussies to visit.

Australians prefer ‘early bird’ bookings.  More than half (56%) of flight bookings are made online more than a month ahead of travel.  Only 15% of flight bookings made on ZUJI Australia are for travel within the same week as the online reservation.

General Booking Trends: 

Aussie online travellers are predominantly economy-class travellers, with 98% of flight bookings for economy-class seats. 59% of trips are for individual travelers while 30% are for pairs.

Only 11% of online travellers travel in a group of three or more as part of the same booking.

All payments for bookings made online on ZUJI Australia are by card.

Weekdays (most commonly Tuesdays, Wednesdays and Thursdays) are popular for booking travel online in Australia and a fifth of all online travel (20%) is booked over a weekend.

About this report:

This report combines data taken from multiple sources.  Predominantly it features insights drawn from proprietary booking data from ZUJI’s Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia, India (Travelocity India), Taiwan, New Zealand (Travelocity New Zealand) and Korea sites, as well as from ZUJI’s
‘Travel Partner Network’ (B2B) sites during the half-year and, in some cases, tracks year-to-date trends.

It also includes some booking data based on Travelocity.com (North America) and lastminute.com (UK) hotel booking trends into Asia.

The report includes ZUJI’s interpretation of the trends represented by booking patterns tracked during the quarter, year-to-date, and over time.

For a copy of the full report please contact Davidson Communications or email [email protected]

A Report by The Mole