Monday, November 28, 2005

Online Travel Research - Over 50s flock to travel websites

Latest Nielsen NetRatings research statistics for online travel reviewed by Netimperative show over 50s flock to travel websites: "More than half (54%) of Brit Web users have visited a travel site representing over 14 million people every month, with the over 50s market booming, according to new research.

The figures, from Internet research firm Nielsen//NetRatings, show a growth of 20% visiting travel sites in the last year alone Significantly, more than four in five (86%) of all British surfers aged over 50 have visited a travel site in the last year, with 1.5 million of them visiting the secure pages of travel websites to book in September 2005 The Nielsen//NetRatings research found that surfers spend on average 40 minutes a month viewing more than 70 pages of content on a variety of travel sites, from airlines to cruise ..

The most popular travel site with the over 50?s is Expedia, ahead of second-placed Lastminute.com by almost 900,000 visitors during summer 2005.

Overall, pure online travel sites are more popular with the over 50?s than the traditional high street brands - Expedia, Lastminute.com, Ebookers, Opodo, and Travelocity collectively more popular than TUI (who own Thomson), Thomas Cook, MyTravel and First Choice.

The research revealed that over 50?s are ?looking and booking? online more than younger counterparts - accessing the secured section of travel websites to make bookings much more regularly."

Wednesday, November 16, 2005

AboveNet Prepares for the Launch of www.totaltravel.co.uk

AboveNet Prepares for the Launch of www.totaltravel.co.uk:

LONDON, November 16 /PRNewswire/ -- AboveNet Communications UK Ltd., a leading provider of fibre connectivity solutions for business and a subsidiary of AboveNet Inc., today announced that it has been chosen to provide totaltravel.com International, Australia's number one internet travel site, with its European internet infrastructure for the launch of its Great Britain site. As part of this agreement, AboveNet has also entered into a sponsorship deal to provide totaltravel.com with services in exchange for having a presence on the new Totaltravel portal.

Launched in Australia in 2002, www.totaltravel.com.au is now one of Australia's largest on-line travel guides. The site is designed for people booking short and long stay trips in and around Australia. It owes its popularity to its great deals on holidays as well as the amount and quality of information and beautiful photo galleries on its site.

The new Great Britain site offers users the opportunity to make travel arrangements by plane, train or taxi, view and print customised road maps, book accommodations, choose restaurants and tourist attractions and find more information about their chosen destination and its surrounding areas. The site already features over 3,000 hotels across England, Scotland and Wales.


"The success of the Australian portal highlights the demand for a travel site offering this level of detail. We have spent 12 months building the content on the UK site and have built a truly unique tool to help our users plan their perfect trip," said Michael Dennis, Director and Co-Founder of totaltravel.com. "We are very pleased to work with a world class provider like AboveNet UK, which will ensure our users receive excellent quality of service when spending time on our site."

Work has already begun on the content of the European sites, which are planned for launch in the next year. AboveNet's technology and comprehensive European network will enable totaltravel.com's rapid expansion into those markets.

Thursday, November 03, 2005

Early days for travel meta-search engines in Europe,

eyefortravel.com - Travel Distribution News, Events and Analysis: Luke McNeice, chief technology officer, Bezurk says "still early days for travel meta-search engines in Europe, with lots of start ups and 'no real dominant players yet...

"Certainly the biggest development in meta-search is the strategic move by the general search engines to either partner or buy into the meta search space, look at Yahoo's acquisition of Kelkoo and FareChase and AOL's investment in Kayak. These developments certinaly validate the value of travel meta search."

McNeice said, "At this stage we are planning on focusing on UK first, as Europe presents a load of challenges which we are currently addressing in our upcoming Asia Pacific launch i.e. multiple languages and cultures. We need to achieve our Asia Pacific roll-out before we tackle Europe."

He continued: "We're just about to launch Bezurk 2.0 which will extend the existing rich user interface to enable customers to compare airfares from multiple websites by price, by schedule, by airline and by provider in real-time thanks to a new AJAX interface recently made famous by Google's revolutionary GMail."

"For hotels we've collated data from over 70 thousand hotels worldwide, which will give our customers unprecedented access to information about hotels in real-time. They will be able to view descriptions and images with the search results, and then be able to further zero in on hotels that they're after by adjusting in real-time"

Totaltravel.com appoints ex-Flight Centre eCommerce chief

e-Travel Blackboard: Australia's Number One Industry Newsletter: "Totaltravel.com, the number one site for Australians seeking information about destinations, has appointed Flight Centres former eCommerce Australia chief as its new global marketing manager.

Paul Fisher was responsible for developing five of Australia's top travel websites including flightcentre.com.au, Australia's no.1 travel agency website, quickbeds.com, escapetravel.com.au, travelthere.com and studentflights.com.au during his time as founder of Flight Centres eCommerce division.

Mr Fishers appointment comes as totaltravel.com achieves more than 250,000 page views per day.

This is an exciting time to join totaltravel.com with more than 30,000 users logging on to it each day, Mr Fisher said.That makes it bigger than Lonely Planet, AAA Tourism and all the State Tourism Authority sites such as Tourism QLD for Australians seeking information about destinations.

And under Hitwises Destinations and Accommodation category, it is now hard on the heels of hotel booking engines such as wotif.com. "