Fragmentation Favors OTAs in Australia's Online Hotel Space

Australia boasts the highest online travel penetration rate in all of Asia Pacific, with over a third of the country's travel booked online. However, not all online channels perform equally well, and when it comes to hotels, travelers in Australia prefer comparison-shopping on online travel agencies (OTAs) as opposed to visiting individual hotel supplier websites.

According to Phocuswright's Australian Online Travel Traffic Report, created in partnership with global digital intelligence provider comScore, OTAs attract the most traffic in the entire travel category; in 4Q10, OTAs drew nearly five times as many monthly unique visitors as hotel supplier websites. The country's highly fragmented hotel landscape contributes to the dominance of online hotel aggregators.

"When shopping for hotels online, Australians clearly favor OTAs over hotel websites, since the supplier landscape is so fragmented," says Chetan Kapoor, research associate at Phocuswright. "However, when consumers do visit hotel websites, it is the global chains and not the local ones that tend to attract the most visitors."

Phocuswright's Australian Online Travel Traffic Report analyzes traffic volume, growth, cross-visitation and source/loss patterns across key travel subcategories, including online travel agencies, airlines, hotels, destination guides, traveler review websites and more. Key topics include:

• Traffic to travel website categories for the 15-month period from 4Q09 4Q10, including:
  • Online travel agencies (OTAs)
  • Airlines
  • Hotels
  • Metasearch
  • Travel guides and traveler reviews
• Travel website rankings within each travel category, including traffic and unique visitor growth
• Segment-specific comparison of traffic to supplier websites versus OTAs
• In-depth analysis of key online players, including cross-visitation, source and loss traffic

Australia's dynamic online travel market is poised for strong double-digit growth over the next several years. Phocuswright's Australian Online Travel Traffic Report (US$695), a Global and Asia Pacific Edition publication, helps travel companies understand and unleash the potential of this vital Asia Pacific market.