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With uncertainty still lingering over many of the world's economies, consumers have grown increasingly careful about their travel spending. A range of influences and information sources impact how consumers decide where to go, and travel behavior varies considerably across different markets. This report explores how the process of destination selection is evolving, and in particular how this process differs between travelers in the U.S., France, Germany and the U.K.
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Does online travel know something other industries don't, or is the category whistling before an economic storm? It's an interesting question as we look at June's data, plus stock prices and some earnings reports coming in during July. Early earnings performance from Expedia was excellent, and the hotels are doing well (though hotel stocks are weakening) and the airlines are benefitting from cheaper fuel, higher load factors and a general, welcome discipline that comes from having been whipsawed by cycles before. And yet ... the question is whether – or how long – this can last in the face of a weakening economy and a looming fiscal cliff.
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Everyone is suddenly worried about the economy, including us. As recently as our Webinar in May, we argued that the economy had perhaps four months of bullish runway left before concerns about the presidential election and the many fiscal decisions that must be made after November 6 become more pressing.
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General search engines like Google have become so ubiquitous that many users would be lost without them. In the travel category, top brands compete fiercely for general search traffic, despite their well-established names and websites. This report examines the role of general search engines in the travel planning process, and includes an overview of travelers' search engine usage by brand, motives for using search, travel products searched for and more.
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Despite rising oil prices and airfares, aggregate gross bookings of the three public U.S. OTAs – Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline – made notable increases in 1Q12. However, near-term headwinds lie in wait.
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Global distribution systems (GDSs) represent a major piece of airline transactions and a vast majority of travel agency flight, hotel and car rental transactions. But the travel agency landscape has evolved significantly, and the GDS no longer always takes center stage when agents book. This analysis examines how travel agents research and book travel products, the role of the GDS and how this varies by agency type.
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On June 13, PhoCusWright presented a special live event that explores the subtle shifts that are impacting the U.S. leisure travel marketplace. Fright or Flight? Key U.S. Consumer Travel Trends examines U.S. traveler behavior and attitudes, and their impact on the leisure travel market.
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Ancillary services have proven to be an enormous new source of higher-margin revenue for airlines, and a useful tool for distinguishing their website offerings from intermediary points of sale. Airlines' efforts to unbundle their content took a new direction in 2009, when they began using XML as a basis for data exchange. This analysis focuses on the latest developments in the airline-ancillaries landscape, revealing the current status and outlook for the near future.
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Online travel's "Goldilocks" recovery continues. Hotel occupancy is rising, hotel rates and RevPAR are around pre-recession peaks and still climbing, and load factors on airplanes are up from last year even as the price of jet fuel slips. Screwing this up would take more than a village. It would take a Congress.
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This May 22, 2012 Webinar explores the key developments that are shaping the corporate travel marketplace, along with market sizing and projections through 2013.
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