Here are some fresh and interesting numbers showing the amazing growth rate of online travel in Europe.
comScore, a leading global firm in measuring the digital world recentely issued a research on European online travel industry, showing that 108.6 million Europeans (half of the total European online population aged 15+) visited a travel related site during the month of March 2007 (+6% vs March 2006).
The most visited online travel Web sites were: Expedia, ViaMichelin and TUI Group with respectively 18.5, 13.5 and 12.5 million European unique visitors. It’s quite interesting that such different players (one pure online player and two companies coming from an offline background, all from different countries) ranked in the first three positions.
The average time spent browsing travel-related content amounts at 37 minutes. Within the travel category, online travel agencies garnered the most time spent, 19 minutes on average, followed by airline sites (17 minutes) and hotel sites (15 minutes).
It’s a lot of people, but it’s also a lot of time in searching infos for your next trip, probably more than what people would typically spend inside a travel agency. There are obviously two ways of looking at it: either a lot of valuable informations and offers out there, or a lot (too much?) of content not quickly addressing the users’ needs.
“Half of the European online population visited a travel site in March – it is clearly one of the most popular activities on the Internet,” commented Bob Ivins, managing director of comScore Europe.