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For more than a decade, PhoCusWright has sized and assessed the U.S. travel marketplace and the major trends that shape how travelers shop for and purchase travel. Distribution trends across air, lodging, car rental, cruise, packages, and rail are well understood. But the travel industry has lacked essential market data on a central element of the travel landscape: what leisure travelers do “when they get there.”

Air travel is a major engine of industry revenue, accounting for 43% of the total U.S. travel market in 2010. But the flight itself is often a means rather than an end. The activities, events, tours, and attractions that travelers experience in-destination are what make the vacations. These activities are often at the core of the leisure travel experience, and sometimes even drive the trip itself.

This landmark study uncovers a surprisingly large market: nearly twice the size of car rental and significantly larger than the cruise and tour operator segments combined. Travelers spent billions of dollars on activities, attractions, events and tours in 2009. Yet travel activities have failed to meaningfully penetrate and participate in the broader travel distribution ecosystem.

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In this one-hour recorded Online Event PhoCusWright Analysts unbundle the hyperbole around airline direct connects, segment fees, merchandizing and more. The link to access the recording is posted on page 5.

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Trends in Hotel Distribution

The airline industry has been capturing headlines as airline companies and online travel agencies (OTAs) feud over representation, access to inventory, ancillary services merchandising, and payment terms in a struggle to gain control over the booking process and dominate airline distribution.

Given the tumult in the airline space, the new developments across the travel industry (and within the hotel industry in particular), and the anticipation of its upcoming conference (theme: Travel Unleashed), PhoCusWright decided the timing was right to explore what the future of hotel distribution holds, how the landscape is changing, and where hoteliers should invest their time and resources to prepare for the future. PhoCusWright asked a panel of 15 industry experts about the current state of hotel distribution and what to expect in the next 24-36 months. What follows is a summary of what the panel had to say, an examination of emerging trends, and a discussion of the practical implications of those trends.

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Online travel is no longer the domain of wealthy nations with pervasive computer and Internet access. It is universal. Any traveler with a computer, tablet or mobile device can make an online transaction – from just about anywhere. However, the level of access to local content varies widely across the globe. Some markets make a wide array of hotel, packaging and car rental inventory available for online booking, while others are more air-centric, or still tethered to offline channels. Additional obstacles include credit card adoption, lack of connectivity among suppliers, and poor technology and transportation infrastructure. This disparity has resulted in varied levels of online penetration by market and segment, proving that the main inhibitor to growth is availability and access, not the appetite of the traveling public.The purpose of this article is to present and compare total and online travel gross bookings for four regions: Europe (EU15 + Switzerland and Norway); the U.S.; Asia Pacific (APAC); and Latin America (LATAM).

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PhoCusWright’s China Online Travel Traffic Report

With the second-largest travel market in the Asia Pacific (APAC) region and the second-largest economy in the world, China is enjoying a period of strong economic growth. Despite a recession that rocked the global.PhoCusWright partnered with global digital intelligence provider comScore to measure and analyze Web traffic within the travel category in China.

This report uses comScore data to analyze traffic – including unique visitors, cross-visitation, and source/loss patterns – across key travel subcategories. The balance between supplier and intermediary channels and the influence of local versus global travel companies vary for individual travel segments. The online travel traffic patterns highlighted in this report illuminate sector-specific dynamics and track both transactional and nontransactional subcategories within the Chinese online travel market.