Travel Websites in Hong Kong

Online travel in Hong Kong appears to be taking off, according to new research from NetValue. The latest survey commissioned by Optimum Media Direction (OMD) shows that the number of visitors to travel and tourism sites has increased by 70% since January 2001, with women and students now accounting for the bulk of surfers.

This latest survey details that site visits have increased from 8.6% in January to 14.6% in May. At the beginning of 2001, there were 90,670 unique visitors to travel sites in Hong Kong. By May this figure had more than doubled to 200,340 unique visitors. Not only were there more visitors, users also spent more time on travel sites over the same time period. The average amount of time users spent per month doubled from 11.9 minutes to 22.6 minutes.

According to NetValue Vice President of Sales and Marketing, Clayton Fitts, "Growth in this sector is long overdue in Asia Pacific and particularly in Hong Kong, one of the regions busiest travel hubs. The online travel industry in the US is one of the most profitable sectors on the Internet. Judging by our findings, this sector is positioned to take off in Asia. Players who are already in this market have a distinct first-mover advantage and are positioned to benefit from future exponential growth."

Local tour operators who also have offline businesses hold the top travel sites in Hong Kong. The only exception is i-evertravel.com which only has an online presence. hongthai.com has the highest reach at 2.9%, but visitors spent the longest amount of time on sunflower.com.hk (43.2 minutes per user).

Commenting on this finding, Mr. Fitts added that "In January, there were virtually no travel sites displaying significant reach in Hong Kong. By May, we see five players with the top site displaying close to 3 per cent reach. In the US and UK, where the online travel sector is more developed, the reach of top sites is roughly around 5 to 8 per cent. Growth in usage of travel sites in Hong Kong has risen dramatically over just a short period of time."

In terms of profile, the majority of online travel site users appear to be women (53.1%), between the ages of 15 to 24 years (43.9%) and students (40.5%). While women make up slightly over half of all travel site visitors, they view more than 80% of the total pages. At the same time, the research shows that, while the number of visitors to travel sites has increased, the bulk of activity is limited to information gathering and comparison shopping, rather than actual purchasing.

Commenting on the bias towards browsing, OMD Interactive Manager for Greater China, Jerry Yee noted that "Online behaviour in Asia has always been more browsing than purchasing. In Hong Kong especially, the World Wide Web is used primarily as a source for information, entertainment and communication tools. There is a decided lack of understanding of how powerful online technology can be. E-commerce functionality, building loyalty via data-mining and other CRM initiatives are just samples of the tools available for businesses. The time has now come for Asian businesses to fully exploit potential of the Internet as a revenue generating stream."

All articles 2006-22 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas unless otherwise stated.

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