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Informative Articles

Cheap Travel Insurance
Guide to Cheap Annual Travel Insurance Vacations are for fun, it means leaving behind your job and responsibilities for a while. Having travel insurance is one way of putting your mind at complete rest. It's a lot easier to enjoy your trip...

How To Save Your Traveling Cost
Have you ever dreamt of sampling local wines in Tuscany in September? Will it be a wonderful time to visit Paris in the spring? Enjoy the English countryside in the summer? You may think this is just a dream and cannot reach. It doesn't have...

Travelers Checks Versus Debit Cards
My first time overseas, I had to exchange cash in $200 of travelers checks to pay a mountaineering guide who hadn't heard of American Express. The bank charged me $8. During the same trip, I used my debit card at an ATM to get $200 from my checking...

Traveling in Germany
When deciding to take a vacation to a western country, I recommend Germany. It has various landscapes and very nice small towns and big cities. This country is, of course, to big to travel all at one time but with a trip of about one month,...

Traveling on a Budget : The Cheapest Vacations Possible
If you're going to travel on a budget, you should think about different ways to cut down on your expenses. This article will give you a number of tips that will let you take a vacation without maxing out the credit cards. First, if you can, you...

 
Online Travel Statistics

The Travel Industry Association of America (TIA) released their annual Travelers’ Use of the Internet study in December 2003. The study shows an increase in the number of people using the internet to research and book travel.

TIA found that 30% of the adult U.S. population (63.8 million) consult the web for travel information. These travelers spend (on average) $300 more on travel, and nearly 40% had an annual household income above $75,000.

Online travelers surf to two or more travel websites, spending an average of 37 minutes. They research and compare prices, check schedules and book trips. The number of people actually booking online increased by 8% over 2002 and grew to 42.2 million people in 2003. Within this group of online travelers, 32 million people made travel arrangements exclusively through the internet (a figure expected to grow according to the TIA).

10 million travelers responded to


email campaigns, causing the TIA to believe that email campaigns are stimulating unplanned travel.

TIA stated that the top 10 travel websites are:
Expedia
Travelocity
Orbitz
Yahoo Travel
Cheap Tickets
Hot Wire
VIPfares
Priceline.com
ITN.net
TravelNow.com

If your business supplies lodging, real estate, shopping, recreation, dining, events or tourist related specialty services, it may be wise to place advertisements with these websites. If you are not making full use of the internet for your marketing campaigns you are missing 30% of your potential market.

As online travelers’ habits become more sophisticated you will find them expecting to find and book everything from one location.

About the Author

MARKETING COORDINATOR and WEBSITE DESIGNER-Radha Khalsa, has extensive experience in the areas of marketing analysis, strategic planning and project management.