Issues & Trends – July 2011
‘IP sensing’ move increases Expedia Australia’s market share
but overall share declines
EXPEDIA has moved past Flight Centre into second place in the “Internet Agency Market Share” league table following an “IP sensing” initiative that re-directs Australians logging into the expedia.com site to expedia.com.au.
The move, implemented on June 22, boosted Expedia Australia’s share of internet visits to travel agency sites to 10.08 per cent in the week ending July 2, according to figures supplied by Experian Hitwise.
This is just ahead of Flight Centre which recorded a 9.18 per cent share for the same period and is now in third place on the travelBulletin market share table compiled from the Experian Hitwise figures.
However the re-alignment does not mean Expedia is gaining a greater share of business from the Australian market.
At the same time as Expedia’s Australian site increased its market share to move from third to second place, the US site plummeted to 24th place in the rankings with a market share of 0.86 per cent.
A month earlier, in the week ending June 11, expedia.com was in fifth place with a 3.62 per cent market share. (travelBulletin, June)
Indeed the combined market share of Expedia’s Australian and US sites in the week ending July 2 (10.94 per cent) actually fell from its 11.62 per cent share a month earlier.
And Flight Centre could point out that the combined share of its companies’ sites – Flight Centre (9.18 per cent) plus Escape Travel (1.81 per cent) plus Student Flights (0.96 per cent – comes to 11.95 per cent which is comfortably ahead of Expedia.
Meanwhile, Webjet remains a clear leader with a 14.37 per cent share of visits for the week ending July 2. This is despite Expedia dropping fees on air bookings and mounting an expensive advertising campaign.