A new PhoCusWright study portrays a "bleak" short-term picture for the overall U.K. travel market, but projects that online travel bookings will increase 3% in 2009 when the final tallies are in.
The report, PhoCusWright's European Online Travel Overview Fifth Edition, notes that amidst a currency devaluation and the recession, U.K. online leisure and unmanaged business travel grew its share of bookings 5 percentage points to 45% of the overall £37.6 billion U.K travel market in 2009.
Online channels in the U.K. are benefitting from travelers' penchant to scour the Web for holiday options, according to the study on travel trends in Europe.
That latter point sounds a bit familiar to me, as U.S. online consumers have been hitting up U.S. websites for deals this year with fervor.
Thus, wearing my Yank [not New York Yankees hat], I find myself compelled to contrast some of these U.K. trends with recent disclosures about the U.S. travel market.
PhoCusWright's U.S. Online Travel Overview Ninth Edition finds that U.S. online leisure and unmanaged business travel bookings will decline 7% in 2009 -- its first drop on record -- although it outpaces the overall U.S. travel market, which is projected to slump to an even greater degree at 16%.
The U.S. online travel market's slower decline than the overall U.S. travel market enabled U.S. webbies to pick up 4 percentage points in share in 2009, as the online grip grew to 39%.
Thus, in both the U.K. and the U.S., online channels are gaining share, although U.K. travel websites are doing so while increasing their bookings in 2009 while U.S. travel websites are experiencing a decline.
In the U.S., online travel agencies fared far better than supplier websites, the U.S. study found.
Back, in the U.K., the OTAs, too, are leading the growth for all Web channels in 2009, PhoCusWright's European study finds.
And, this doesn't mean that other online sectors in the U.K. are standing still.
On the supplier-direct side in the U.K., which is Europe's largest online travel market and will remain so through 2009, tour operators will make the greatest strides this year, hotel websites will grow in parallel with the market, and airline websites will retain their hold on more than half of online-direct sales, the European report says.
"U.K. tour operators have invested heavily in marketing efforts to drive customers online and in technology to enhance the user experience," says Peter O’Connor, PhoCusWright's market analyst, U.K. and France. "Selling a combination of pre-packaged, dynamically packaged and decoupled travel components, their share of U.K. online direct travel is expected to increase through 2011."
Carroll Rheem, PhoCusWright's research director, notes that the devaluation and recession have led to a "significant fall-off" in U.K. visitors to the Mediterranean, although the impact to the domestic U.K. travel market "has been relatively soft."
A "bleak" outlook is the watchword for the immediate prospects of the U.K. travel market overall.
PhoCusWright's European study projects that booking levels in the U.K. market will only get back up to 2007 levels in 2012.
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Disclosure: I am a PhoCusWright contractor, but was not involved in writing or researching the U.K. or European reports.