The popularity of travel online has grown rapidly, from travel blogs, booking aggregator sites, user-review sites and more, so much so that cyberspace is fast becoming a destination itself.
Travel and tourism websites have become an integral for holiday-planning and booking, with more Australians looking to book flights, accommodation and travel insurance, read other travellers’ reviews of hotels and tourist attractions, read up on destinations and a whole lot more, all with the click of the mouse.
The transformation of the travel and tourism industry in the online and digital space has been massive. So just where are people visiting?
The latest findings from Roy Morgan Research reveal which in the 12 months to March 2016, 13.7 percent of the population (or 2.7 million people) visited the Qantas website in an average four weeks, making it Australia’s most visited travel website.
Next most visited was Booking.com and Jetstar, each of which attracts 9.7 percent of the population (1.9 million people) per four weeks. Rounding out the top five are Virgin Australia’s website (9.6 percent) and Tripadvisor (8.8 percent).
Besides the Flight Centre website, the Top 15 travel websites are dominated by online-only businesses: mainly booking sites, but also News Corp-owned news.com.au/travel (5.3 percent) and Fairfax-owned Traveller.com.au (3.8 percent).
Cross-visitation across the two most popular non-airline sites, Booking.com and Tripadvisor saw 37.2 percent of Aussies who visit Tripadvisor in an average four weeks also visit Booking.com, and 33.6 percent of Booking.com users also visit Tripadvisor.
