Less Web Traffic to Travel Sites from search : U.S. Hitwise Report

Hitwise: "Below are the top five unique search terms which resulted in visits to the Travel - Destinations and Accommodation category, for the week ending 05/22/2004.RankSearch TermMarket Share
1.holiday inn3.42%
2.hotels2.72%
3.hotels.com2.19%
4.las vegas1.81%
5.disneyland1.70%
Based on US data."

Hitwise | Tekrati Research News: "According to Hitwise, online travel shoppers are doing more comparison shopping and becoming less dependent on general and travel-specific search engines."

The Tekrati article states that "The research indicates a fundamental shift in how consumers use the Web to locate travel-related information" based on the following stats:

10% less traffic from search engines and directories to travel sites October 2004 than October 2003

11 percent increase in traffic in directly from other travel sites

The newer travel search/ comparison engines accounted for 0.45% of total visits to the travel category in October 2004. (www.sidestep.com, www.mobissimo.com, yahoo.farechase.com, www.cheapflights.com, www.qixo.com, www.farechase.com)

Seven of the top 10 search terms for the Hitwise “Destinations and Accommodations” category were for specific hotels and destinations... their most frequent searches are for accommodations"

Traffic to discount airline sites increased 12% in October 2004 v October 2003
7% of all traffic to travel sites is to major airlines sites and 5% to discount airlines October 2004

Bill Tancer, Vice President of Research at Hitwise said “The data indicates that consumers are becoming more sophisticated in their online travel shopping...Having gained familiarity with the top online travel agencies, hotel sites, and airline sites, they are less likely to initiate travel research and purchasing from a search engine.”

Tancer is suggesting that loyalty ( and thus branding) is coming into play but it could also be due to sites like Tripadvisor which link to deals on Expedia.co.uk, Hotels.com and Travelocity or Yahoo travel, neither of which are deemed travel search sites, plus the masses of affiliate "travel sites". To me it could mean that users are just going round in ever-decreasing circles? What path are they using to move between travel sites? Favourites? Adverts? Links? Type address? That data could confirm his argument...