Mobile continues to play a significant role at Wotif Group with 44% of total traffic to its consumer-facing sites coming via mobile channels.
For its flagship brand, Australian online travel agency Wotif, mobile web and apps contribute a total of 49% of hotel-related traffic and 23.3% of room nights for 12 months ending June 2014, an increase of 37% in visits and 16.7% in room nights year-on-year.
App downloads for the site exceeded 7.3 million, with a further 1.3 to 8.6 million achieved since the end of the reporting period.
The graph below shows the growth in mobile bookings for Wotif:
Wotif Group’s online travel brands in Asia Pacific region also include Lastminute.com.au, Travel.com.au, Asia Web Direct, LateStays.com, GoDo.com.au and Arnold Travel Technology.
Financials
The group, which is in the process of being acquired by Expedia, received reported revenues of $138.57 million, an increase of 2.1% compared to the previous 12 months of $135.79 million.
Net profit after tax was reported as $40.01 million, however, this was a decline of 15.4% when compared to the previous period of $47.24 million.
Chairman Dick Mcllwain says:
"The decline in profit is directly attributed to the response by the company to the competition in Australian market, and an investment in strategy designed to introduce the new sources of revenue".
Total transaction were $1.06 billion, a decline of 2.2% compared to $1.08 billion in the 12 months ending June 2013.
Hotels
Accommodation revenue was $119.76 million.
Total room night for the Group was reported as 6.04 million, a decline of 10.8%. However, average room rates for the group rose to $144.62 per night (an increase of 3%).
Wotif says it has contracted around 30,000 hotels - 12,300 in Australia and New Zealand, 11,300 in Asia, and 6,300 elsewhere around the world, an increase year-on-year of 7.5%.
The company increased its accommodation options by adding Rakuten hotel inventory.
Managing director and group CEO Scott Blume says:
"The competitive landscape for our business continued to evolve and rapidly change during the financial year. Revenue gains were predominantly driven by a commission increase (from 11% to 12%, from January 2014) and an average room rate increase (to $156.13 per night) but overall results were negatively impacted by a 10.8% decrease in room night sales year on year."
Flights
Revenue from flights and "other revenue" for was $16.3 million.
Total transaction value (TTV) for flights bookings (excluding flight sales via dynamic packages) increased 37.6% to $165.15 million. Majority of this flight TTV was for international travel.
A total of about 230,000 flight bookings were made during the reporting period, an increase of 19.8%.
Dynamic packages
The company completed the toll-out of its dynamic packaging product for domestic and international destinations, with an average of around 4,500 rooms per month delivered via the service, a massive jump from around 600 rooms per month in the 12 months before.
The company claims its dynamic packages business a "remarkable success", highlighting the company's ability to design and deliver an online solution that not only combines hotels and flights, but also theatre tickets.
Wotif.com customer reviews
The OTA claims it now has around 1.3 million hotel reviews (written by customers booked a hotel in Wotif), with Australian properties making up the lion's share (1.06 million reviews).
IT cost
IT development cost for FY14 was reported as $6.67 million. An investment was made by Wotif to improve its customer relationship management system in order to effectively communicate with its customer base of about 3.5 million across APAC.
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