Online Air Travel Proves Popular

Airline websites are more popular than ever in Europe, according to the latest research from Nielsen//NetRatings. Following September 11, the last quarter of 2001 saw the travel sector struggling economically, and there was speculation that the airline operations would be hit by a downturn.

However, the latest research reveals that the European airlines sector has more than doubled its online audience since last October, with 118% growth in 10 months. In France and Germany, the growth of airline sites has outstripped the growth of travel sites overall. In the case of Germany this is due to Lufthansa, which has grown rapidly in the last year to become Europe's leading online airline. In the UK, Ryanair, British Airways, and Easy Group, which includes Easyjet, experienced an increase in audience.

Travel brands like Lastminute and Expedia have remained popular across Europe, with Lastminute being in a position to report profitability recently. However, whilst both Expedia and recent market entrant Opodo have experienced strong growth in the last 12 months, the Lastminute brand itself has not seen anything like the same levels of growth, but its recent purchase of travelselect.com, which experienced a year-on-year growth of 127% strengthens its market share.

Tom Ewing, European Analyst at Nielsen//NetRatings says 'The online airline sector has confounded most of the predictions made at the end of last year. Travel sites in general in Europe are recovering from the economic and tourism downturn, and the airline sector in particular is booming. What's interesting is that the fastest-growing sites - Lufthansa, BA and KLM - are all the sites of well-established non-budget airlines. This again defies predictions that the online market would continue to be dominated by budget airlines: it's the full price sector that is doing best at the moment, and Lufthansa has overtaken the low-cost operators to become the European market leader. Consumers still want cheaper flights, as the success of travel portals shows, but they can get those flights now from a range of operators, not just 'budget' airlines.'

Ewing believes 'this shows that the established airlines are more web-savvy now, more competitive on price, as well as on reliability and customer care issues, enabling them to compete more effectively with the budget online airlines.'

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

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