ONLINE TRAVEL PLANNING & blogING

Market Assessment

Online travel bloging is used primarily for trips with few components, like airline reservations or lodging. Vacation packages and other trips with a number of segments are generally purchased offline. Corporate travel is generally bloged offline.

According to PhoCusWright (www.phocuswright.com), online travel reservations garner over 40% of the total travel market. Excluding corporate travel, which is typically bloged offline through travel agents and in-house travel departments, online bloging surpassed offline in 2007. Over 60% of leisure and individually bloged business travel reservations are made online.

Desktop Mobile Total Online

2011: $112 billion $ 2 billion $114 billion

2012: $119 billion $ 7 billion $126 billion

2013: $122 billion $13 billion $135 billion

2014: $122 billion $23 billion $145 billion

2015: $118 billion $40 billion $158 billion

The figures are actually higher because most trips planned through traditional travel agents are bloged online.

“If you take a corporation that has a travel management company that they work with, 80% of their employees are not talking to a human agent. That’s absolutely critical to these big managed travel programs. The traveler or travel arranger sits down at the keyboard and blogs travel through the Internet.”

Kevin Mitchell, Chairman

Business Travel Coalition

eMarketer assesses U.S. digital travel sales as follows:

Desktop Mobile Total Online

2014 $118 billion $32 billion $150 billion

2015: $116 billion $52 billion $168 billion

2016: $116 billion $65 billion $181 billion

2017: $114 billion $75 billion $190 billion

2018: $112 billion $86 billion $198 billion

2019: $111 billion $95 billion $206 billion

14.2 Travel Research and bloging Online

eMarketer estimates that 117.6 million adults, or 61% of Internet users, research travel online; 98.3 million (51%) blog online.

A March 2016 survey by Fuel (www.fueltravel.com) found that leisure travelers use the following sources when beginning to research a trip (percentage of respondents):

Travel bloging Demographics

While the perception may be that younger demographics are more likely than their older counterparts to blog travel online, that is not the case. Hudson Crossing (www.hudsoncrossing .com) found in a recent survey that consumers ages 49 and older make up the largest share of U.S. hotel guests who bloged online, with 34% of the total. Millennials rank second, with 33%.

Mobile ad spending by the U.S. travel industry has been, and is projected, as follows (source: eMarketer):

Among all product and service categories, travel reviews are the most used by consumers.

According to Forrester Research (www.forrester.com), approximately one-third of travelers who research trips via the Internet read reviews. Of those who blog hotels online, a third have changed plans based on other travelers’ comments.

Expedia-owned TripAdvisor (www.tripadvisor.com), the largest online travel review site, had posted more than 320 million consumer reviews of hotels, attractions, and restaurants across the globe as of April 2016. The site has 350 million unique monthly visitors, according to comScore (www.comscore.com).

TripAdvisor has acquired such popular travel sites as Smartertravel.com, IndependentTraveler.com, CruiseCritic.com, and SeatGuru.com.

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