The Current State of Online Travel

Given the severity of the problems in other markets, less mainstream attention has been placed on the state of the travel industry. Compete analyzed online activity within the air and hotel categories to identify if shifts are taking place in consumer interest in these products. The findings show a clear decline in online travel research activity, with actual booking and purchase activity also trending downward.

Air and hotel shopper volumes (consumers researching but not necessarily purchasing) have both gone into negative territory compared to a year ago, a first for 2008. In each month of 2008 to this point, online air and hotel shoppers had been up versus the prior year periods. Cautious consumers then began thinking less about travel in September, and started to abandon travel websites in October. While only a fraction of shoppers end up completing a purchase in any given month, these declines represent an important shrinking of the pool of vacationers, last minute shoppers, and undecided consumers to which travel marketers can generate transactions from.

On the positive side, online travel bookers for air and hotel are still up compared to a year ago, however significant wind has been taken out of the sails. Shopping and researching activity is a leading indicator of future travel purchasing, and unless a positive catalyst introduces itself, it appears that bookings growth will be pressured further in the coming months.

Travel marketers have reason to be concerned and must pay close attention to the signals that their customers and online prospects are sending. Given the decline in shoppers to work with, a well-planned online marketing strategy is more important now than ever. With the right mix of online advertising to bring in new shoppers, helpful website functionality to cleanly present a variety of choices, and compelling offers to seal the deal, savvy competitors will weather the storm.

Comments

[Hoteles]

There is still growth in online hotel bookings, its just not as easy to gain and retain customers as it used to be.

2008 Dec 04 05:20 PM

[ReviewResorts]

We found the downward trend started a bit earlier. April of '08 was the high and each month trended downward since. However, this is not unlike the rest of the travel industry and business as a whole.

The interesting dynamic to be pondered is what sociological changes have been put in motion since the financial crisis. How will people travel? What will they be looking for? How will they get their information? These are the questions the industry much be asking.

George
ReviewResorts.com

2008 Dec 04 07:32 PM

[User 313322]

I had published a small report on the travel trends showing past 4 years' search volumes on google. The url is:
the-speeding-zebra.blo...
It's only going to get worse, or so it seems!

2008 Dec 05 03:48 AM