Vianet are reporting a 110% increase of reservations processed in Novemebr 2008, comapred with the same month last year. This sounds impressive however this may not nessessaraly reflect a gain in market share at the expense of the other main accommodation resellers. The increase of the public's use of the internet to make on-line reservations would have helped, however the increase should not have been unexpected as Travelbug had a relatively soft launch in only September last year and had a sluggish start.
The online travel market remains as competitive and crowded as ever. Wotif has been running in New Zealand for five years and is still setting the benchmark. AA travel has invested heavily into it's online accommodation offer and its difficult to gauge what benefits have been forthcoming from the partnership with big talking Australian Roamfree.com. New Zealand owned, Ezibed.com have been quiet achievers and Jasons. are utilising their marketing expertise to further polish their acquisition of popular motel booking engine, Holidayguide.
The stats provided by vianet.travel below make interesting reading.
10th December 2008
Vianet.travel December Newsletter
Summer has arrived… easily proven by how quickly the lawns are growing. Along with the lawns growing, so too is the market for booking travel online. Predictions from members of the travel industry who attended the recent WIT-Web In Travel 2008 conference felt that the online travel market in Asia Pacific would truly come into its own in the next five years. That’s when they feel travel booked online as a percentage of total travel bookings would cross the 50% mark. Click here to read the full article.
We feel extremely confident about the future for booking accommodation/travel online, despite the global recession and decline in New Zealand visitor arrivals. Bookings processed by the Vianet system in November 2008 were 110% over the same month last year an average lead time of 33 days. If you find statistics interesting here are couple more for you:
http://blog.vianet.travel/news-and-events/operator-newsletters/december-newsletter/
