TRAVEL
INDUSTRY
SURVEY 2010
Figure 3
What types of suppliers have you booked on the Web in 2010
Figure 4
How often is your
website updated?
85%
81%
79%
75%
71%
61%
55%
Weekly
31%
44%
5% Daily 17%
Whenever
we can 33%
Monthly
15%
Quarterly
Note: Only those with an agency
website answered this question
Travel insurance Airlines
Hotel
Tours
Cruises Car rental
Rail Theater/concert
ing back sharply last year (Figure 1,
Page 26).
When agents were asked to estimate
the percentage of their bookings made
online, responses indicated two years
of increases followed by a 5-point
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 26
drop this year (Figure 2, Page 26).
An expanded question in this year’s
survey yielded new findings about
products booked on the Web. More
agents book travel insurance on the
Web than any other product or service, and 44% of those who use the
Web for online bookings have booked
theater, concert or other tickets. These
products were not included in previous surveys, which focused on six
core supplier groups: air, hotel, tours,
cruises, car rental and rail (Figure 3).
The relative rankings have not
changed significantly in recent years,
but cruises and car rentals have
shown more pronounced upward
trends since 2004, while the number
of agents booking tours online has
fluctuated widely.
SATURATION POINT?
ASTA’s survey also confirms a lev-eling-off of the industry’s rush to the
Internet. A decade ago, only about
half of agencies had a website. That
number rose to two-thirds in mid-decade and has hovered between
75% and 80% for the past five years.
The data also suggest that agents
place little value on frequent or regular updates to their sites. Over the last
five years, fewer than 20% say they
update their sites daily; the most frequent response to this question has
been “whenever we can” (Figure 4).
Agents have been gradually adding
functions to their websites, but some
interactive features that are common
on the Internet are apparently slow
to catch on with travel retailers.
As recently as 2006, 62% of agents
with websites did not have an email
