A major analysis of the leading websites in the US has painted an interesting picture of some significant changes taking place in online travel.
Web audience metrics provider SimilarWeb examined five categories in the industry - airlines, cruise, accommodation, intermediaries and review/recommendations - to try and understand what is happening around areas such as digital marketing, traffic flows and device usage.
Before the individual sector results, here are some of the overarching findings from the study:
- Mobile market share has grown year-on-year overall, although some sectors have seen a slight fall.
- Decrease in spend on paid search, as well as display ads.
- General fall in social media traffic to travel websites.
For each of the sectors under examination, SimilarWeb looked at the top 25 brands in each from an overall traffic perspective.
Accommodation
The top 25 websites account for just over half (54%) of all traffic in the sector, although their combined traffic has decreased by 18% between March 2015 and March 2016.
Airlines
Intermediaries
Cruise
Review/recommendation sites