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Have computer, will travel - online travel bookings soar

March 28, 2004 |

This year the Internet is expected to generate nearly $53 billion in leisure travel bookings alone - nearly 22 percent of the travel industry's revenues.

Consumers are taking to the Web for their bookings in sharply higher numbers, driven online by airline fare wars, high-speed Internet connections that make shopping easier and the tantalizing notion that, just maybe, a jaw-dropping bargain lies only a mouse-click away.

More than 35 million Americans purchased travel online last year, up 17 percent from 2002, according to the independent travel research firm PhoCusWright Inc. Nineteen million more researched destinations or prices there, the company said.

This year the Internet is expected to generate nearly $53 billion in leisure travel bookings alone—nearly 22 percent of the travel industry’s revenues, according to a projection from Forrester Research.

“Online travel is incredibly robust; it is stronger than we expected it to be,” said Henry Harteveldt, a Forrester analyst in San Francisco. “There are a lot of incredible deals right now.”

Jeffrey Katz, chief executive of Orbitz Inc., the Chicago-based online travel agency, forecasts even more dramatic growth ahead thanks to a newly intensified airline competition. Low-cost carriers are expanding to new routes and adding more planes, forcing bigger rivals to slash transcontinental fares in response.

“If you’ve flown from the East Coast to the West Coast or checked out prices to Florida, it is a bloodbath, with high fuel prices, new capacity in the marketplace, new lower labor costs” at major airlines, Katz told analysts recently.

Get the full story at The Detroit News

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