E-Commerce Times Talkback

Re: The Internet Travel Wars - Fight or Flight?
Posted by: Michael Mahoney 2001-08-09 20:38:01

See Full Story

Is the online travel market big enough to comfortably feed three of its giants --
Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz -- at the same time?

According to Forrester, 18.9 million households will make their travel purchases on the
Web this year, netting US$16.7 billion in leisure travel revenues. That'll buy a lot of
peanuts, but the question is: from whom? The answer may lie in the lacework of consumer
features and technology on each site.

Re: The Internet Travel Wars - Fight or Flight?
Posted by: Ricky Currier 2001-08-24 11:01:50 In reply to: Michael Mahoney

When grandparents wish to travel to see grandkids
they do not go to the PC to do the net. A travel
agent helps them in their plans and does not discriminate by limiting their travel options.

Re: The Internet Travel Wars - Fight or Flight?
Posted by: Joe Buhler 2001-08-15 18:25:18 In reply to: Michael Mahoney

These companies certainly offer a wide variety of attractive travel products at competitive prices; however, to move the online travel industry to the next level the customer will increasingly demand to research and book online more complex vacation products to multiple destinations. So far none of these sites offer this functionality. I would not call the combination of an airfare with a hotel and maybe car rental dynamic packaging. True dynamic packaging is again not offered by any of these major sites and it will be interesting to see how they approach this key issue to maximize revenue.

Re: The Internet Travel Wars - Fight or Flight?
Posted by: stan mazor 2001-08-10 12:38:50 In reply to: Michael Mahoney

I'm confused about counting travel revenue.
For a $100 ticket a normal commission is
about $8 (8%). Therefore the gross revenue
that I would count is $8 not $100,
(1/12th of gross). Therefore I don't
think gross sales is a very good number
to discuss in the case of travel sales.

thx. stan