Top 5 European Travel Sites and the Long Tail After a quick look into the online travel industry and a quick summary of the German online travel market I'm looking at the European travel market. Europe has a total of 219 mio. European people online >= 15 years, a global broadband market share of ~31% (Eastern and Western Europe, PointTopic 2006) and a broadband penetration rate of ~14% (ECTA, broadband connections/population in Q10/06).

According to ComScore European travel sites experienced 108 mio. visitors in March 2007, a traffic plus of 6% compared to March 2006 spending 37 minutes browsing travel-related content online, where online travel agencies got 19 minutes on average, followed by airline sites (17 minutes) and hotel sites (15 minutes).

'Expedia Inc. led the European travel category with 18.5 million European unique visitors aged 15 and older during March. The second most-visited European travel site was ViaMichelin, with 13.5 million European unique visitors, followed by the TUI Group’s 12.5 million European unique visitors, then Lastminute.com sites with 9.8 million European unique visitors and Priceline.com Incorporated with 8.9 million European unique visitors.'

The main revenue still comes from commissions, but advertising generates a significant revenue stream, too. The European online travel market is predicted to experience a further double-digit growth during the coming years.

On a European level the UK represents a European market share of 32%, followed by France 23%, then Germany with 20%, Scandinavia with 10% and Spain with 5% in online leisure travel sales according to eMarketer. European online leisure/unmanaged business travel as a percentage of the total travel market will approach 25% in 2007 according to PhoCusWright.

'Planning and purchasing behavior is undergoing significant change, evidenced by travelers who are now taking control and finding/creating the perfect trip, not just the cheapest trip. Customers communicating with customers has triggered an unprecedented social networking phenomenon and a resurgence in the Long Tail economy.'

• eCommerce Fueled by Fast Broadband

Labels: ecommerce, europe, markets

  ¶ 'Top 5 European Travel Sites and the Long Tail' posted by eA : 3:25 PM  0 comments links to this post

  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.

• Brand the most Valuable Asset of a Global Company

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  0 comments links to this post

  Europe's Top eCommerce Sites Dec. 2006 From Europe's key markets U.K., France and Germany during holiday shopping season week ending Dec/03/2006: Unfortunately Ebay is excluded, but I would put it somewhere on top in all 3 countries (-:
From ComScore:

France: Groupe PPR CDISCOUNT.COM Amazon Sites 3 Suisses Apple Computer, Inc. ALAPAGE.COM QUELLE.FR Yves Rocher AmericanGreetings Property Hewlett Packard

UK: Argos Amazon Sites Tesco Stores Littlewoods Shop Direct Group Play.com Sites Apple Computer, Inc. NEXT Group Ticketmaster Groupe PPR The Carphone Warehouse Group

Germany: Amazon Sites Otto Gruppe O2ONLINE.DE NECKERMANN.DE QUELLE.DE Apple Computer, Inc. Tchibo T-MOBILE.DE WELTBILD.DE Medion Shop

Labels: bizdev, ecommerce, europe

  ¶ 'Europe's Top eCommerce Sites Dec. 2006' posted by eA : 9:41 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Continued Growth in UK eCommerce Markets, Ikea's Coming Running eCommerce operations in Germany, Sweden, France and the US, Ikea quietly added a checkout to it's UK website for the instant restricted to certain shipping areas and entered the newly released Top 50 list of UK online retailers. From InternetRetailing:

1. Amazon UK
2. Argos
3. Tesco.com
4. Play.com
5. easyJet
6. Expedia.co.uk
7. Amazon.com
8. Thomson Holidays
9. British Airways
10. Apple Computer
...
49. Ikea

Nothing new in the top rank..., more than 50% are existing bricks-and-mortar retailers, half of the UK top 50 companies sell travel and tickets to their audience.

Labels: bizdev, ecommerce, europe, markets, uk

  ¶ 'Continued Growth in UK eCommerce Markets, Ikea's Coming' posted by eA : 8:28 PM  0 comments links to this post

  Huge Market for Google Checkout in Europe Experience showed that centralization into a single European currency provided many practical benefits for citizens, I'm thinking of travelling with a single currency and buying goods and services abroad, particularly when coupled with the progress of eCommerce it fostered significant growth in trade within the euro area and seen overall it's a big step forward in user friendlyness.

For most German retailers offering a web shopping cart means trying to follow and copy the Amazon model - tschibo.de, otto.de, quelle.de, weltbild.de, neckermann.de, conrad.de, buch.de - their number is endless, a shopping cart is a shopping cart with or without customer reviews and customer experience seems to be a foreign word for them although they should be able to form an attention loop to gather continuous feedback and establish an environment to optimize value.

On top of everything most of them don't even care about the critical areas where their shoppers drop out. Checkout and payments technology should address convenience to get onto a path the Web can really improve one's life.

The single personal Google Checkout provides an experience that centralizes and stores payment information and purchase history across several merchants for buyers and extends reach and enhances security for sellers, it even reduces costs through clever financial incentives accepting Google Checkout as a payment method.

Experience showed that a centralization on behalf of a user simplifies the checkout process, leads to more sales and returns customers thus Google Checkout is a wonderful new thing that really can improve one's digital lifestyle. I'm expecting Google Checkout to enter the European Market in 2007.

Labels: checkout, europe, google, lifestyle, markets, payments

  ¶ 'Huge Market for Google Checkout in Europe' posted by eA : 12:19 AM  0 comments links to this post