PhoCusWright's Global Online Travel Overview: Comparing Three Major Rergions: U.S.,Europe and Asia Pacific

PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition: Airlines

PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition: Hotels & Lodging

PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition: Packaged Travel

PhoCusWright's German Online Travel Overview Fifth Edition

PhoCusWright’s U.K. Online Travel Overview Fifth Edition

PhoCusWright's Scandinavian Online Travel Overview Fifth Edition

France, although certainly not immune to the current economic downturn, is better positioned than most of its neighbors. According to Banque de France, gross domestic product is expected to suffer an overall reduction of 3% in 2009. While this drop is lower than the European average of 4%, it will still have a sizable impact on travel industry revenues because of France’s high proportion of domestic travelers. With less disposable income, French travelers are expected to cut back on travel spending, take fewer leisure trips and shorten trip length. Incoming visitor figures are also down, particularly from the U.S., the U.K. and Japan, as their own economies are battered by the recession. However, France has been comparatively successful at developing new markets to compensate – in particular,attracting Middle Eastern and Russian leisure travelers during the summer months. The French economy is expected to be more resilient than Britain’s, Spain’s, Italy’s or Germany’s, and the recession is not expected to cut as deep or last as long. Most analysts foresee a turnaround by the end of 2010.

PhoCusWright's European Online Travel Overview Fifth Edition

The collection of markets that represent the foundation of the European travel industry has undergone significant change since the onset of 2008. Along with the rest of the globe, the economic softness that began to appear through the course of the year worsened abruptly in 4Q08. The prosperous early months of 2008 were followed by a summer of astronomical fuel prices and a fall season starved of the usual business travel swell, which left travel worse off than many other industries.

While EU gross domestic product (GDP) grew, the European travel market declined very slightly. Also, while common recessionary trends such as weakened consumer confidence have affected all nations, individual characteristics have exposed the strengths and weaknesses of each market (and its players) differently. Business/leisure mix, rail infrastructure, currency fluctuations, inbound/outbound tourism and unemployment rates are just some of the factors that shape how various travel markets are reacting to the downturn.

Travel Content Distribution: Industry Heal Thyself

While air and hotel content distribution certainly can be improved, it has evolved with the times and generally remained efficient since its inception. Unfortunately, other segments have not followed suit and still struggle with this issue. This paper will discuss how the air and hotel segments have changed with regard to distribution and why other travel services should strategize to compete on value instead of for control of the distribution channel.

What's Next for European Online Travel

Innovation and technology are enormously important for all industries, but they are especially critical for travel and tourism, which, as the world’s largest industry, is continually at the forefront of change. This article will review some of the most important online travel and technology trends shaping the way Europeans will plan and purchase their travel in the years to come.

PhoCusWright's U.S. Corporate Travel Distribution Fourth Edition

With the U.S. economy mired in a deep recession, all segments of the travel industry are suffering greatly. But few segments have been hit as hard as corporate travel. Amid double-digit declines in traveler demand and revenue, the corporate travel landscape is undergoing a major realignment. Corporations are pulling back across the board, and everyone from airlines to hotels to travel management companies is under pressure.

The dynamics of corporate travel distribution, however, continue to evolve rapidly. Online adoption is growing, expense integration is accelerating and technology innovation and adoption continue to reshape the business travel landscape. Understanding the changes at hand requires a holistic view of the issues and forces facing the total company, not just the insular perspective of the travel discipline.

This report sets new foundations: surveying through online methods and opening the definition of “traveler” to include those who have taken trips including air and/or hotel. A major change from CTTS is a difference in some of the terminology used in this report. With Internet penetration past the 80% mark among U.S. adults, the reference to travelers with Internet access as “online travelers” has become superfluous.

This report has two parts. Part One focuses on the travel behavior of U.S. consumers and provides demographics-based analysis of general travel behavior and the travel planning process. Part Two provides psychographic analysis of U.S. travelers to examine how values, attitudes and opinions shape traveler behavior.

PhoCusWright’s Destination Marketing: Understanding the Role and Impact of Destination Marketers

Destination marketers play a unique role in the leisure travel marketplace, positioned as they are at the crossroads betweens travelers and travel suppliers. At the heart of leisure travel lies the destination, which drives the itinerary and all of the components purchased along the way. At the heart of each destination lie destination marketers. Thousands at the national, state, regional and local levels play a vital role in stimulating travel demand.

This largely untapped sector represents an enormous Long Tail opportunity for travel suppliers and intermediaries, technology vendors and service providers. For destination marketers, the explosion of online consumer tools and technologies provide unprecedented potential to connect with travelers and promote their destinations in new and effective ways. At the same time, destination marketers face challenges ranging from funding constraints to navigating social media that are forcing many to take a close look at what they need to do to remain competitive and relevant.

PhoCusWright’s Destination Marketing: Understanding the Role and Impact of Destination Marketers represents a major research effort to analyze this important segment, with the goal of identifying key trends and capabilities and understanding the role of destination marketing in the global travel market. This report presents key findings and recommendations from the larger research project.

The Facebook Phenomenon

U.S Online Travel Overview Eighth Edition Update: 2009-2010

Travel Industry Economics: Dismal But Not Desperate

The causes and implications of both the recession and prospects for longer-term recovery are discussed specifically with travel industry managers in mind. This article purposely avoids a barrage of statistics and relies on a few graphics to remain simple and focused.

PhoCusWright's Mobile: The Next Platform for Travel

Hyperlocal Content Services

Going Green: The Business Impact of Environmental Awareness on Travel

There is little doubt that environmental awareness has gained mainstream status in the U.S., as evidenced by the plethora of “green” consumer products and media attention to the topic. In this setting, American companies can no longer operate without acknowledging perhaps their oldest – but most recently recognized – stakeholder: the environment.Travel, as one of the country’s largest industries, is certainly no exception.

Ten Things to Expect (Including the Unexpected) in Online Travel in 2009

A Winning Philosophy for Travel-Related Web Site Design

Web site design has matured substantially over the years as tools and design concepts have become more sophisticated. Some of the early groundbreaking sites that were considered “leading edge” in their day look primitive in today’s world.

Today, complex user interaction and response can be facilitated by the use of broadband with AJAX and Flash technologies – an improvement over the page-based, request-and-reply paradigm that is the signature of HTML-based Web content.

Semantic Web and Semantic Search

The explosive growth of user-generated content, multimedia and vertical data across the Internet has brought a renewed focus to finding new methods of extracting meaningful information. An increasing number of technology companies are looking for ways to add meaning to, or extract understanding from, these vast pools of data. In essence they are aiming to make the Web a meaningful guide rather than a static catalog of information. Over the last several years, this long-term goal has fueled a number of promising approaches to a more meaningful Web, commonly referred to as the semantic Web.

Learning to Think Like a Mobile Traveler

To date, travel industry mobile efforts have largely been limited to creating scaled-down versions of travel Web sites formatted for mobile. While this is a good first step, it fails to take advantage of the unique contexts in which travelers use their mobile devices. Rather than just viewing mobile as a smaller screen for viewing travel Web sites, it’s crucial to recognize the contextual implications of a device that travelers use when they are on the move. Travel companies will not begin to reap the benefits of mobile until they introduce mobile offerings that account for the mobile user’s context and the unique capabilities of their handset.

PhoCusWright's Indian Online Travel Overview

The last three years have seen an unprecedented shift in the supply-side dynamics of the travel industry in India. Deregulation of the airline industry – and the absence of government regulation on the distribution side – have unleashed an entrepreneurial energy that strikes at the root of how consumers shop for, research and buy travel.

Packaging Update: Weak Economy Gives Packaging a Lift

The Internet has forever changed the shopping and buying patterns of U.S. travelers. By 2000 it became clear that online travel booking would eventually become mainstream – it was just a matter of time as the “next generation” quickly adopted new technologies and behaviors. By 2007, the market reached a tipping point when roughly half of all travel was purchased online in the United States. How much can the “next generation”, or the NEXTgen traveler, continue to tip the scales?

To ascertain the next wave of online travel development in the U.S., Ypartership and PhoCusWright joined forces to understand the characteristics of the NEXTgen traveler. The purpose of The NEXTgen Traveler™ study was to learn about their preferences, ownership and use related to: entertainment and computer hardware and software; the Internet, social networks and Web 2.0 features; lifestyle and media habits. In particular, the survey probed consumers’ travel behaviors, intentions, aspirations and budget, thus allowing overall technology savviness to be intersected with travel-related characteristics. This resulted in a thorough view of the NEXTgen traveler across all aspects of the travel value chain, including searching, shopping and buying.

This report presents key findings from this research. It identifies important aspects of the NEXTgen traveler such as:

• Channels used for shopping and purchasing travel
• Influences affecting travel purchase decisions
• Activities performed through the Internet, mobile devices and other technology
• Social media Web sites – and functionalities - used
• Media choices

Purchase The NEXTgen Traveler™ today – get to know this important demographic and stay ahead of your competition.

The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Tenth Edition

For the past ten years, PhoCusWright Inc. has conducted a nationally representative Consumer Travel Trends Survey among U.S. online travelers to ascertain data on travel shopping and purchase behavior. Commencing in 2002, this research was constructed as an Omnibus study to afford client companies the opportunity to investigate and quantify pertinent issues relevant to their own businesses without commissioning nationwide studies of their own.

In addition to understanding the dynamics of the online traveler, PhoCusWright also probed the travel buying behavior of frequent business travelers.

Behind the Firewall: Social Networking for the Corporate Travel Industry

Many corporate travel managers and buyers view the growth of sites such as MySpace or Facebook as an Internet phenomenon that has little impact on their day-to-day jobs. This is not only a naïve view, but it also represents a significant missed opportunity for the corporate travel industry. The offline influence of these corporate communities has always had an impact on employee behavior. Finding a way to capture the effects of this community electronically can have an impact on corporate traveler behavior.

Technology is driving changes in the way business travel is booked and managed. As the mainstream market embraces techniques such as self-booking and interactive dashboards, emerging technology under the broad umbrella of Web 2.0 promises to integrate user-generated content and transform interfaces to become more user-centric.

The primary purpose of this report is to educate the reader on the major trends in corporate travel technology. This study provides detail into specific features and functionality within various corporate travel technology categories. The information contained in this study was derived from comprehensive interviews with over 20 travel software vendors, travel management companies (TMCs), as well as of hundreds of corporate travel managers and buyers in 2006 and 2007.

This research report reviews functionality for the major vendor categories, but does not equate specific features with vendors. Instead, the study discusses emerging, unique and standard features within each category. By adopting this approach, the reader can use this study as a reference for evaluating suppliers, recognizing that any given feature that is emerging or unique to a limited number of suppliers will shortly become standard.