Booming German Online Travel Market After a Quick Look into the Online Travel Industry on a global level here a quick summary of the German online travel market. With more than 40 mio. people online, a share of 59% of broadband connections and with an average of more than 30 vacation days per year Germany has excellent premises for further growth.

According to the annual trend study Web-Tourismus 2007 presenting the state of the eCommerce in on-line tourism (leisure trips) in Germany, Germans love to travel and it turns out that further growth will mainly come from online-sales and the online-distribution channel has won and will win further market share from offline channels over the next few years.

'The whole branch achieved 40.57 bn. euros (2006) in the same period and shone once more with a growth, which was based almost without exception on the Internet tourism. Compared with 2005 the gained on-line turnovers grew about 36%.'

'The good development once more was driven by the web-sales of flights. Furthermore, tour operators had a tremendous on-line growth in sales - with a growth of almost 54% compared to 2005.'

The forecasts into 2009 are positive as well, 2007 43.38 bn. Euros and 2008 45.47 bn. Euros driven by online sales.

On a European level the UK represents a European market share of 32%, followed by France 23% and then Germany with 20% in online leisure travel sales according to eMarketer.

Interesting is that due to longer established supplier brands Germans and French prefer to book directly at online travel suppliers including low-cost airline online bookings while the other citizens prefer online travel agencies.

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As of PhoCusWright the top 5 European online travel agencies are lastminute.com, Expedia, ebookers, Opodo and Travelocity representing 60% of the entire online travel agency market in Europe.

Tour operators such as TUI, Thomas Cook, MyTravel and Rewe are challenged by the low-cost carriers and online travel agencies offering dynamic packaging.

Labels: ecommerce, europe, markets

  ¶ 'Booming German Online Travel Market' posted by eA : 7:11 PM