http://www.economist.com/displaystory.cfm?story_id=4455692
Flying from the computer Sep 29th 2005 >From The Economist print edition The internet has pitted travel agents against travel providers in an intense battle to win customers <Freed from having to ring busy call centres or queue at high-street travel agents, consumers have gone online in droves to find flights, hotels, car rentals and other travel services, making travel one of the most successful forms of e-commerce. The industry was ideally suited to be an internet business. Most booking information already existed in computer systems, but it was used by clerks and not directly available to consumers. By designing websites that ordinary people could use, online travel agents were able to put product availability and price transparency at their customers' fingertips.> <The websites of travel suppliers, such as airlines and hotels, are visited first by 37% of shoppers. The other 9% start planning their trips using websites run by travel-search firms, such as Kayak.com and SideStep.com. These work like shopping comparison services: matching users' itineraries with offers and then directing bookings to the websites of agents and suppliers. As with other forms of e-commerce, consumers tend to visit more than one website before they take out their credit cards. > <America's massive shift to online travel is being repeated in other parts of the world. Online services have yet to take off in the huge Asian market, which means that the potential there is also huge. But in Europe they are growing rapidly> < the more costly the trip, the more likely a traveller is to use a traditional travel agent. In America, according to Forrester, a research company, long-haul travellers spend 58% more than domestic leisure travellers, but are more than twice as likely to use an offline agent to book their trip. Henry Harteveldt, Forrester's online travel analyst, points out that even wealthy long-haul travellers are just as tantalised by low prices and many use the internet to research and plan their journeys, even though they may end up booking offline.>
