What Will Online Travel Look Like In 2013?

Four years ago, booking online was already the cheapest way to organise travel. But what will the world of online travel look like in 2013?

A recent report from Forrester Research US Online Travel Forecast, 2008 To 2013 has a stab at guessing some of the key trends that will dominate Internet travel booking in four years time. While that forecast is necessarily US-centric, it does provide some interesting food for thought.

By 2013, the number of travellers directly researching and booking part of their trip online will have grown -- but only by a relatively modest 16%. The main reason that number won't grow faster, Forrester argues, is that travel sites aren't good enough for many users, thanks to a combination of poor design, inflexible options, and unclear security.

Indeed, one of the growth areas will be in what Forrester describes as "leisure lookers": people who use the Web to research and price their travel plans but then make their final bookings and payments offline. By 2013, one in five online travellers will fall into this category.

But how of a share of the overall travel market will Internet sales comprise? By 2013, Forrester predicts that 46% of leisure and unmanaged business travel will be sold online, and that 39% of managed business travel (the kind organised via a mandated company policy) will go through online channels. Individual sectors will have much more Internet activity: more than half in the case of airlines, about a third of hotel bookings, and almost two-thirds of car rental bookings.

Regional variations might also play a role. Online booking is so heavily promoted by Australia's domestic airlines that I'd be astonished if the total sales even now were below 50%. (The much wider range of active airlines in the US might well be a factor here, despite many of them constantly teetering on the brink of bankruptcy.)

It's less of a surprise that tours and cruises still won't be predominantly booked online, with each accounting for about 10% of the market. In both cases, considerable amounts of money are involved, so it seems we're happier having a few discussions and getting questions answered before we part with our cash. Or as Forrester put it: "Both sectors' complexity and high degree of emotional involvement lend themselves to being purchased offline, primarily through travel agents."

Source: LifeHacker