The Online Travel Market is here to stay and growing at a speedy clip. Recent analyses by Allied Market Research show that online travel agencies and online direct booking to suppliers is paced to grow to $1.1 billion by 2022 when looking at purchases of transportation, accommodations and vacation packages.
Not surprisingly, the Asia-Pacific region is expected to witness the highest growth during the forecast period. Direct travel suppliers, such as hotels, airlines and car rental companies, which offer booking facilities on their websites, dominate the market.
Growth of the online travel market is driven by the increase in internet penetration, rise in disposable income of people in emerging markets, and ease of comparing a variety of travel options online.
Market players are introducing innovative travel and vacation package deals and even augmented intelligence to assist travelers in making sound travel decisions as per their spending capability.
Direct to Consumer Travel
Direct travel suppliers segment accounted for approximately 57% of the overall online travel market revenue in 2015. Though, the segment will continue to dominate the market, a gradual reduction in its market share is expected, owing to the growing popularity of online travel agencies (OTAs).
OTAs are marketing and expanding their offerings at a rapid rate to attract travelers and increase their customer base through mobile and desktop outreach. The Mobile platform attributes to two-sevenths of the market revenue and is anticipated to witness highest growth in coming years. This is attributed to increased penetration of smartphones and growing confidence of people in safety of mobile payments.
The transportation segment is projected to maintain its lead in the overall online travel services market, owing to rise in online flight bookings. We are seeing expansion in the number of low-cost carriers and also growth in the number of connecting flights for tier I and II cities across the globe and these are growing the number of online bookings.
Expedia, a leading online travel agency, announced its plans to launch a rail ticketing service in Europe this year, to mark its presence in the rail services within the transportation segment.
“The travel market has evolved considerably over the past few years, owing to digitalization of travel services and the growing travelling trend, worldwide,” says Yogiata Sharma, a research analyst at Allied.
“The proliferation of mobile devices largely supplements the growth of this market. The markest is witnessing consolidation, with leading OTAs acquiring the start-ups and other smaller players, thereby, giving a tough competition to the established direct travel suppliers and travel agents.”
The online travel market is segmented on the basis of age groups mostly. Travelers in the age group of 32-43 years occupy a major portion of the market. However, from a growth perspective, young travelers 22-31 will likely witness the highest CAGR, due to extensive use of social media and smartphones for travel planning and bookings.
North America accounted for the majority revenue in 2015; however, Asia-Pacific is estimated to overtake North America in coming years to become the leading revenue-generating region.
MARKET PLAYERS IN THE VALUE CHAIN:
- Expedia, Inc.
- Priceline Group Inc.
- TripAdvisor LLC
- Ctrip.Com International, Ltd.
- Hostelworld Group
- Hotel Urbano Travel and Tourism Sa
- Cheapoair.Com
- Trivago Gmbh
- Thomas Cook Group plc
- MakeMytrip Limited
- Alibaba Group
- Elong, Inc.
- TUI Group
- Tuniu Corporation
- AirGorilla, LLC
- Hays Travel limited
- Airbnb, Inc.
- Yatra Online Private Limited, India
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