Priceline is top (by unique visitors) in five out of six countries in Southeast Asia, reports comScore, the web traffic measurement service.
In two reports - India digital future in focus 2013 and Southeast Asia digital future in focus 2013 - Comscore reveals top travel sites by country, average time spent by users in travel sites, and a number of data points.
Online travel in India
India has the highest reach in the travel category in countries such as Brazil, Russia, and China, but India's reach of 38% surpasses the worldwide reach of 36%.
Here, "reach" is defined as the % of total user base in the market for a category. For example, 38% reach in the travel category in India means that out of the total population of 74 million internet users in India, some 38% visit travel sites every month.
Also, the average time spent by Indian users in travel portals is the highest among Brazil, Russia, China and worldwide.
China has 348 million internet users (a 54% marketshare among online users in APAC) and one in four users visit a travel portal.
Chart below shows the top ten travel websites in India by unique visitors. One interesting element to note is that apart from TripAdvisor, there are no other global travel brand in the list.
Indian government owned railway portal (IRCTC) tops the list of travel sites, with unique visitors to the brand almost double those of MakeMyTrip, the second site in the top ten.
In terms of minutes spent per visitor in travel portals, IRCTC has almost four times the number for MakeMyTrip. But, based on this data we cannot conclude that IRCTC has the highest user engagement.
We also have to factor in the slow response time of the railway portal during peak hours, multiple session time-outs and its high failure rates. Believe it or not, it often takes up to one hour to book a train ticket during peak hours.
The top ten list has four OTAs, four travel information/discussion services, a rail booking portal and a bus booking portal (redBus).
Online travel in Southeast Asia
Perhaps the headline stat in this report is that almost one in two web users in Singapore have regular access to travel services online, but when it comes to average amount of time spent by users on travel sites, Indonesia takes the lead by a huge margin.
Nevertheless, Singapore tops the reach of all travel sub-segments in Southeast Asia.
Charts below show the top five travel portals by country in Southeast Asia. Inevitably, Priceline.com tops this list in five countries and TripAdvisor also makes an appearance in five .
Apart from Thailand, all other countries have at least two airline sites in their respective top five lists.