Traditional airlines are making progress online in their battle with 'no-frills' rivals

Features: "Traditional airlines are making progress online in their battle with 'no-frills' rivals, according to new research.

Hitwise data for the top 10 no-frills airline websites reveals that visits by UK consumers have increased by 12.5% over the past year. However, the broader Commercial Airlines sector, which includes both traditional and no-frills carriers, has outpaced this growth, with an increase of 19.4% year on year.
The difference in growth is attributable, the company says, to the ever-increasing competition for direct bookings online. In the past 12 months, Hitwise added 44 websites to its Commercial Airlines sector, a 27% growth in the number of websites compared with last year.
By studying the online customer acquisition strategies and business models of the likes of easyJet and Ryanair, companies such as British Airways look to be making up some lost ground. With visits to the online travel industry growing another 27% in the past 12 months, consumers are clearly responding to the flexibility and price transparency that the Internet brings to their travel plans."

In terms of the most popular no-frills airlines, easyJet (www.easyjet.com) is the market leader, accounting for over a third of all visits to the custom sector, followed by Ryanair (www.ryanair.com), which receives a quarter of visits, and BMI Baby (www.bmibaby.com), which saw one in 10 visits to the custom sector.

Hitwise Search Terms shows that for the Commercial Airlines sector, of the top 15 most searched for keywords, over 70% were for no-frills airlines. British Airways is the third most searched for airline brand."

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