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PhoCusWright FYI

Faced with looming economic uncertainty and a shortage of leisure time, online travelers made some compromises in 2007. Slightly fewer Americans traveled for either business or pleasure, and they made trade-offs in the types of components purchased, the frequency of travel and the kind of trips taken. Several travel patterns gained popularity, including vacations of a week or longer and combination purchases.

Findings from The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition highlight the trade-off trends:

Vacations continued to outpace shorter, long weekend jaunts this year, and more travelers were attracted to the convenience and savings afforded by purchasing combination travel and packages. Many of these consumers used Web-based traveler information, such as online video and podcasts, and metasearch tools to limit the number of Web sites they visited.
In times of economic uncertainty, long weekend travel is increasingly dominated by the infrequent traveler, who uses these short getaways as respites when a vacation is not possible. This proves particularly true when the proportion of self-employed workers increases (as it did in 2007), as these individuals have more limited time and fewer prescribed opportunities for leisure travel.
Infrequent travelers account for an increasing share of business trips taken—now at 59%—as corporations become more rigorous about limiting the number of traveling employees and unnecessary trips. But because road warriors continue to transverse the globe more aggressively, the average number of business trips increased to 6.93 in 2007.

The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition highlights a series of key online buying and shopping metrics and is available for individual sale. The report's table of contents, list of tables and methodology are available online. PhoCusWright's Global Edition subscribers may access the report at www.phocuswright.com.