Top ranking travel sites in US
I received a Hitwise Report this week from a number of sources (thanks to all) which showed the top travel websites in the US for the month of April 2007. The top website by a long shot was MapQuest, followed by Yahoo! and Google Maps. I don’t if map sites should really count and to this end in my view the top sites were fourth placed Expedia, fifth was Cheap Tickets and then Southwest Airlines.
Sites that could be considered Web 2.0 that ranked highly were Yahoo! Travel at number 10 (seventh if you ignore the three mapping sites) and Trip Advisor at fifteenth.
If measured by the number of page views then Travelocity jumps right up to second place behind Expedia, from seventh based on overall visits.
But, the very top website for the month of April by average session duration is Lonely Planet’s forum site Thorn Tree. To me this shows the importance of peer reviews and advice sharing. The average time spent of the website is just under 30 minutes. Funnily enough the website with the second longest duration is the Sunset Beach bar in St Maarten, Netherlands Antilles. Have a look at this site is great fun and a lesson to us all in how to create and maintain a relationship with you customer both offline and online.
As expected Google kicked butt as the top search engine used for reaching travel industry websites. Finally, amongst other things, the report showed that 43% of users clicked onto another travel industry website straight after being on one. This means users are searching more than one travel site to find what they are looking for.
Remember, these figures were for the US only.
Tags: Industry