US internet travel bookings up 20 per cent
31 May 2005
Internet travel bookings in the first three months of 2005 rose by 20 per cent compared with a year earlier in the United States, according to new figures.
Travel bookings overall grew by just four per cent over the year, according to internet consultant comScore Networks.
Online travel companies such as Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz are now selling harder to corporations and expanding into foreign markets to open up new opportunities for profit. However, many companies are still losing money in both their corporate travel and foreign markets.
Online travel firms are also rapidly consolidating. Priceline.com recently reported a jump in first-quarter bookings of around double the online industry's average, having recently purchased one of Europe's biggest hotel reservations companies, Active Hotels. Travelocity's parent company, Sabre Holdings, has announced that it has agreed to buy Lastminute.com, a popular European online travel company.
Jeffery H. Boyd, Priceline's chief executive, told the New York Times that new products and services could offer sources of revenue growth in the US, adding: "We're in the very early days of being able to communicate a broad travel experience with highly effective merchandising. New product development isn't anywhere near over."
According to comScore, online leisure travel bookings reached about $51 billion in 2004, or 44 per cent of all online sales. An estimated 30 per cent of all travel bookings occur online, with the bulk of the market growth recorded between 2001 and 2003.
Around $15 billion in online travel was sold in the first quarter of this year, while airlines, hotels and car-rental agencies increased sales on their own websites 22 per cent. ComScore said supplier sites sold 62.5 percent of travel booked online in the fourth quarter of 2004, with the online travel sites selling the rest.
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