Online Travelers Bargain-Hunt on the Web

The Internet as a trip starting point.

Roughly a quarter of US Internet users traveled on a commercial airline or booked a hotel in both 2005 and 2006, according to PhoCusWright's "Consumer Travel Trends Survey Ninth Edition."

Yet the proportion of people doing these things fell by a percentage point between 2005 and 2006. With the number of Internet-using travelers steady, will competition for their attention increase?

For certain travel products, consumers find the Internet ideal for conducting research but not for booking reservations. Burst Media found that a much higher percentage of survey respondents planned to research online and book offline hotel accommodations (50.1%) than airline flights (39.2%) or car rental reservations (12.2%).

Generally speaking, the more complex the travel product, the more likely it will be researched online but booked offline. Travelers who book offline cite help from live customer service agents as a major incentive.

Still, Web sites remain the biggest influence on airline ticket purchasing for US Internet users, according to a DoubleClick and ROI Research survey conducted in July 2006.

In hard-asset categories such as home products and apparel, stores are the most important consumer influence. But in travel, and airfares particularly, Web sites (33%) influenced far more consumers to buy tickets. Word-of-mouth (9%) played a smaller role in airline ticket purchases than in other verticals, and travel agents (8%) had one-quarter of the influence of Web sites.