Some fascinating data and detail into the growth of online travel in the Asia-Pacific region from Joe Nguyen, vice president in South East Asia at Comscore.
At the top of the story behind the region's growth is the nugget that travel sites are outpacing growth from the general internet audience by almost three to one.
The total internet audience increased by 7% from 477 million in 2009 to 511 million in 2010, but visits to travel sites jumped 19% from 108 million to 129 million.
Making up the largest share of the growth in travel sites comes from online travel agents in Asia-Pacific, increasing by 30% from 40 million to 52 million over the same period.
In the airline sector, AirAsia leads the field with 3.5 million unique visitors a month in August 2010 (up 15% y/y). Tiger Airways, interestingly, has the largest growth amongst the top ten airlines with a 52% leap from 2009 to 2010 to 930,000 monthly UVs.
Around specific behaviour online, Comscore's data paints an interesting picture.
For example, developing markets in Asia have a low number of female users (India 30% and Indonesia 36%), but figures in other Asian markets are closer to those in the US and Europe, such as Malaysia (47%), Singapore (51%) and Japan (44%).
Among the over-45s, car rental is the rather curious winner as the most popular internet category, well ahead of ISP services, sports, politics and food and the leader in the travel sector. Airlines come in eighth position and hotels at 19.