PhoCusWright Research

Vacation rentals now account for more than one fifth of the U.S. lodging industry, based on room revenue. Rapid advancement is altering the competitive landscape, enabling property management companies to run their rental operations with greater savvy and sophistication, empowering individual homeowners to market and rent their vacation homes directly, and improving the shopping and booking experience. This report represents a comprehensive study of the U.S. vacation rental marketplace, including sizing, key segmentation, challenges, opportunities and trends.
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While the U.S. economy showed clear signs of recovery in 2012, there were enough mixed signals to make vacation decisions difficult for many Americans. Through a longitudinal analysis, PhoCusWright's U.S. Consumer Travel Report Fifth Edition examines traveler behavior along each step of the travel planning process - from the media travelers rely on to make destination and product decisions, to the channels they use to book and share their trip experiences. Key metrics include frequency and duration of trips, travel expenditure and travel component purchases, and travel intentions for the coming year.
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Nearly two thirds of U.S. online travelers now own a smartphone, one third own a tablet and nearly a fourth own both. Rapid adoption of mobile devices among travelers is impacting every phase of the travel process, and mobile is becoming the new battleground for travel companies seeking to grow market share. This report provides a detailed assessment of the U.S. mobile travel market, including consumer behavior trends, mobile market sizing and projections for key travel segments.
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Despite a challenging operating environment overseas and continuing economic uncertainty at home, the U.S. public online travel agencies (OTAs) maintained their momentum in 3Q12. This Datapoint reviews the OTAs' performance in the third quarter of 2012, highlighting key trends and developments in the U.S. and abroad.
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Thanks to technological advancements, the amount of data an organization can create in just a single day has become mind-boggling and unwieldy. Although sifting through it in any meaningful way requires time and investment in tools for data mining and analytics, using this information intelligently can yield major results for businesses.
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As travelers hop from site to site cobbling together their perfect trips, their mouse clicks yield important clues to the shifting dynamics of the online travel marketplace. PhoCusWright partnered with New York-based Experian Hitwise to identify key trends influencing how consumers plan travel online. PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Traffic Report analyzes the most important categories in the travel vertical, revealing traffic patterns for both transactional and nontransactional travel websites and providing a top-level view of visitation and both upstream and downstream traffic.
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As once-youthful online travel agency brands become well-known household names, OTAs' share of the total travel market remains steady and growth settles into a modest pace. OTAs' focus on selling hotel rooms - now more profitable than flights - will continue to intensify, especially as consumers demand mobile apps to accommodate their increasing affinity for booking last-minute stays.
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While the economy - and the travel industry - didn't improve as much in 2012 as everyone hoped, U.S. travelers remain resilient. PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Twelfth Edition hashes out the impact of the current economic uncertainty on the industry and delves into the dynamics of the industry's near future. In addition to market sizing and growth forecasts by travel segment and distribution channel - including mobile - the report tracks the technology trends that will shape the industry through 2014.
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The second quarter of 2012 was challenging for U.S. public online travel agencies (OTAs) – Expedia, Orbitz and Priceline. While domestic business was resilient for most, relatively weak travel demand in Europe meant that growth from overseas operations was muted across the board.
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The stats for August were fine. Hotel occupancy was up strongly, after posting a nothing-to-brag-about increase of less than 1 percentage point in July. ADRs rose, RevPAR was up and airplanes continued to run more than 85% full. So far, so good. Then Spain's budget came out, rioters hit the streets, and we were all reminded that the macro cloud hanging over businesses of all kind hasn't gone anywhere. Priceline shares, always sensitive to Europe, shed more than 1%. Other travel shares also gave up gains from earlier in the month.
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