Internet Tourism Marketing Up

Globally ,446 million unique visitors aged 15 +visited a travel site from a work or home computer in February 2011.This represents one-third of the worldwide internet audience and is an 18 per cent growth in visitors compared to February 2010, according to a study report of PATA . The majority of visitors to travel sites come from Europe or North America; 63 per cent come from those two regions, though they only represent 42 per cent of the global internet population. In February 2011, internet users in the Asia-Pacific region represented 41 per cent of the total global internet population, but only represented 26 per cent of visitors to online travel destinations, the report states. Countries with the highest rates of travel site visitation are primarily in Europe and North America. The United Kingdom tops the list, with two-thirds of its online population visiting travel sites in February. A notable exception is Singapore, a small city-state where practically any flight is bound to be for an international destination. More than half of internet users in Singapore visited a travel site during the same month, it adds. Among travel subcategories, travel information is the most popular, with 208-million global visitors. Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are also very popular, with a combined 181 million unique visitors in February 2011. Hotels/resorts sites received 119 million worldwide visitors during February, while airlines reached 114 million visitors. As with the travel category overall, countries with the highest visitation rates to airlines sites are primarily in North America and Europe. Singapore and Malaysia are among the top 12, as are Australia and New Zealand. However, two-thirds of the fastest-growing countries for this category are in Asia, led by China, Vietnam, and Hong Kong. In China, this translates to 6.8-million additional visitors to the category compared to last year, the report shows. In the Asia-Pacific region, low-cost airlines have posted significant growth over the past year. Malaysian discount airline Air Asia added an impressive 1.2 million visitors to its website in the past year to maintain its lead as the top-visited low-cost airline site in the region. Tiger Airways posted the strongest growth, tripling its online traffic to reach 1.8 million visitors, while Malaysia’s Firefly and India’s Indigo posted growth of 89 per cent and 70 per cent, respectively.