Online Travel Agencies, Travel Media Sites Tower Over Suppliers in Japan

Online travel agencies (OTAs) lead all travel categories in terms of monthly unique visitors, attracting more than twice as many visitors as airline websites, the most popular supplier website category. According to Phocuswright's Japan Online Travel Traffic Report (a Global and Asia Pacific Edition publication), in May – July 2011, OTAs attracted an average of 11.3 million monthly unique visitors. Approximately one third of all travel category visitors visited an OTA site in this period. Travel information sites – the second-most frequented online travel category in Japan – averaged 7.1 million monthly unique visitors in May – July 2011.

Supplier sites, in contrast, typically attract far fewer visitors. While airlines lead among supplier websites in Japan, they attract less than half the visitors as OTAs. Other supplier website categories – ground transportation, hotel and car rental websites – trail even further.

Within the travel categories that attract the most visitors (and in fact, across all travel website categories), it is local, not global companies that dominate. Among the 10 most popular OTAs in the country, nine are local companies (Expedia Japan ranks eighth).

Phocuswright's Japan Online Travel Traffic Report analyzes traffic volume, unique visitors, cross-visitation and source/loss patterns across key travel subcategories, including online travel agencies, airlines, hotels, metasearch, traditional travel agency websites and more. Key coverage includes:

• Traffic to travel website categories, with in-depth analysis of the 15-month period ending July 2011
• Travel website rankings within each travel category, including average monthly unique visitors
• Comparison of traffic to supplier websites versus OTAs and non-transactional sites
• Detailed examination of key online players, including cross-visitation, source and loss patterns

Japan's online travel bookings are projected to exceed US$31 billion in 2012. For more detailed information about one of Asia Pacific's most important online travel markets, see Phocuswright's Japan Online Travel Traffic Report (US$995).

Phocuswright has published other country-specific reports for the Asia Pacific region: Australia ($695), China ($695), India ($695). All four reports are available as a package for significant savings.