Trend nel Turismo Online in Asia – Australia, Cina e India

La settimana scorsa ho partecipato ad un webinar realizzato da PhocusWright intitolato “Asia Pacific Online Travel Traffic Jam! Special Focus on Australia, India and China“. Dopo aver participato al Web in Travel di Singapore poche settimane fa (e soprattutto, vivendo in Australia), il mio interesse nei confronti dell’evoluzione nel turismo in questi paesi sta crescendo notevolmente.

I dati presentati nel corso nel webinar – realizzato in collaborazione con ComScore – seppur superficiali, dipingono un quadro relativo a queste economie Asiatiche veramente impressionante, nonche’ tassi di crescita nell’online travel di gran lunga superiori rispetto ai mercati occidentali e con caratteristiche molto diverse.

Durante il webinar, sono intervenuti alcuni fra i principali esperti di settore:

• Douglas Quinby, Sr. Director Research presso PhocusWright
• Deepak Jain, Ricercatore presso PhocusWright
• Chetan Kapoor, Ricercatore presso PhocusWright
• Joe Nguyen, Vice Presidente, Southeast Asia and India, ComScore Inc.

In questo post, vorrei condividere con voi le slides dell’evento , cosi’ come i contenuti principali.

Onde evitare imprecisioni, preferisco riportare i miei ‘appunti’ in inglese (a costo di confondere Google 🙂 )

• China and India are benefiting from rising disposable incomes, improvements in infrastructures and advancements in information technologies, all factors that come to influence the tourism sector directly.

• Europe is still the World largest travel market, with nearly 300 billion dollars in gross travel bookings. 250 billion dollars worth bookings happened Asia Pacific. Asia Pacific gross bookings surpassed the US ones last year (2010).

•  Within the Asia Pacific, few key markets – Japan China Australia/New Zealand and India – account for 80% of the whole region travel bookings. Japan leads with 86 billion dollars of travel bookings (2010) followed by China (63 billion), ANZ (29 billion) and India (18 billion)

• Travel demand in China is booming. When it comes to online penetration, we see some striking differences between these markets. Online penetration in Australia and New Zealand reflects the more mature western markets, like US and Europe

• In India, despite infrastructure challenges, the online penetration is very high (24% of bookings)

• China, on the other hand has the higher number of mobile and internet users in the world. Despite this, the online internet penetration stands at 8%. This is because a significant chunk of bookings in China are still fulfilled offline or through call centers

• Last year, the online travel growth of the Asia Pacific region was fenomenal, all markets very interested by a big rise. China and India will continue to grow in double digits, while the more mature online markets, Australia and Japan the growth will slow down

• In Australia, the total internet population have the highest penetration of online traveller (nearly 1 out of 2 users use travel websites)

• Australia also boasts the highest rate of internet users visiting travel websites (half of the internet users population, around 6 million). However, when compared to the other 3 markets, Australia counts for the least number of unique visitors

•  In Japan, despite being the region with the largest online travel market, only 1 in 3 internet users visit travel websites

• On the other hand, China shadows other markets in terms of monthly unique visitors visiting travel websites (14% of the total internet users). Chinese users are spending more time on Social Networks, gaming sites and media sites. Nearly 8 in 10 users visit these categories. This trend, presents long term growth opportunities for the online travel sector in China

• Online travellers in the Asia Pacific can be divided in 2 age groups: the ‘Young’ and the ‘Mature’. In Australia and Japan, the demographics of online travellers trend more towards to ‘Mature’ age group. In contrast, the majority of online travellers in China and India belong to the “Young’ age group and they will continue to play a strong role in driving the region’s online growth. In India, three out of four Internet users are between 15 and 34 years old in the first quarter of 2011. Further, four in 10 Internet users are 25-34, an age group likely to have some purchasing power and disposable income. Also notable is the extremely low penetration among older adults. Only 8% of Internet users in India are 45 or older. Young Internet users also dominate in China, although to a lesser extent. In the first quarter of 2011, 15-34 year olds accounted for nearly 60% of China’s online population, and over three in 10 Internet users were 15-25. Nearly 178.8 mil­lion Chinese Internet users are 15-34, almost six times larger than the same population in India. It is this younger population that is driving heavy visitation to media, portal and entertainment sites in China. Australia and Japan reflect more mature online audiences, where Internet usage is far more prevalent across the total population. Internet users are more evenly divided across age groups. In both countries, roughly six in 10 Internet users in the first quarter of 2011 are older than 34 and one in five were older than 54. This stands in stark contrast to China and India, where just 6% and 2% of the total Internet population, respectively, were 55 or older. In Japan, nearly 17 million Internet users (23%) are 35-44, making this age group Japan’s largest

• The Asia-Pacific traveller loves to shop online. Increased bookings across suppliers and online intermediaries sites. OTAs are the most frequented online travel category in the region (except for India, where they are the 2nd most frequented, but they are growing fast). OTAs category in Australia attracted 2 million visitors in the 4th quarter on 2010. In China, the category attracted 6 times more visitors in the first quarter of this year

• Yet, OTAs share of traffic share in China is the least among the 3 countries

• Surprisingly, ground transportation sites attract the most number of online travellers in India, led by the India rail booking site (10 million unique visitors)

• Local OTAs attract the highest traffic across the 3 markets . There is a fierce competition among all the OTAs in these markets, exception made for China, where CTrip is the leader. CTrip is also the largest OTA in the Asia Pacific  in terms of gross bookings (almost 7 million unique visitors). India’s MakeMyTrip and Yatra follow (with 3,000 and 2,900 million unique visitors respectively). Global players such as Expedia and Travelocity haven’t make it in the Top 3.  Traffic to CTrip represents 16% of the online travel population in China. Traffic to MakeMyTrip, represent 18% of the total online travel population in India

• Cleartrip is also growing very fast in India and it’s the fastest growing OTA among the ones mentioned

• In terms of its visitor traffic, MakeMyTrip has the highest penetration of the total population in its country

• In Australia, 31% of users who visited Wotif, also visited Qantas website. 1 in 5 of Wotif visitors also visited lastminute.com.au and Tripadvisor

• For MakeMyTrip, only a handful of visitors go to airline websites (airlines in India work hand in hand with OTAs for distribution). 31% of MakeMyTrip visitors also visits Yatra (another OTAs). 36% of Wotif shoppers also visited IRCTC for rail fares and bookings

• In case of CTrip, visitors to the site also shop on airlines sites in large numbers. 3 out of 4 also visited AirChina website. 1 out of 2 visited China’s second largest carrier, China Southern. Cross visitation among intermediaries is intense as well: nearly half of visitors to CTrip went to MangoCity and Priceline. 74% of CTrip visitors also visit the travel reviews site Lyping

• Online travel shopping in the Asia Pacific begins with a search box! While Google dominates search in most markets, Baidu drives traffic in China

• Search drives traffic to MakeMyTrip and Wotif, while in case of CTrip 18% of the traffic came from search. In absolute terms though, Ctrip search traffic is 3 times higher than MakeMyTtrip

• OTAs are the largest referrals to Ctrip (1/4 of its visitors) . This proves that there’s a great deal of cross shopping between Chinese OTAs

• Overall, traffic to travel reviews sites and metasearch in small, but at a country specific level there are some outliers. Metasearch counts for 25% of traffic in China, and reviews sites count for 13% and 10% of traffic in India and China respectively

• Women tend to shop more travel online compared to men (however men tend to spend more time on the sites)

Per concludere, la APAC region sta indubbiamente diventando affollata e gran parte della popolazione attualmente attiva sul web sta iniziando a prenotare i propri viaggi online. Questi trend non possono essere ignorati e rappresentano una incredibile opportunita’ per gli operatori turistici di inserirsi in quella che attualmente e’ la seconda area al Mondo per quanto riguarda il turismo online…ma che e’ destinata a diventare molto presto la prima.

I dati presentati da questo webinar credo costituiscano una buona base per poter approndire e capire le dinamiche e le sfide connesse all’evoluzione del turismo nei mercati Asiatici.

L’evoluzione del Turismo Social – Infografica

La start-up svedese Tripl (per ora accessibile soltanto ad invito) ha messo online da pochi giorni sul proprio sito una interessante infografica, che presenta alcuni dati (aggregati da diverse fonti) in merito allo stato dell’arte del turismo online, con particolare enfasi sul cosiddetto “social travel“.

Fra le statistiche – a mio avviso – piu’ interessanti:

• entro la fine del 2012, assisteremo a circa 1.1 miliardi di arrivi internazionali
• il 72% di coloro che possiedono un account su un social network accede ad esso quotidianamente durante il viaggio
• soltanto il 7% di coloro che possiedono un account su un social network utilizzano l’internet mobile mentre viaggiano.
• il 69% delle aziende appartenenti al settore travel ha visto un incremento del traffico al proprio sito generato da Facebook
• il 46% delle aziende appartenenti al settore travel ha visto un incremento del traffico al sito generato da Twitter
• Southwest Airlinesdetiene il record di “like” su Facebook (+1,655,000) e followers su Twitter (1,147,000)
• Las Vegas, Singapore, Sydney, Londra, New York sono in ordine le citta’ con il maggiore numero di “like” associati alla pagina Facebook corrispondente (Las Vegas has +445,700 like su Facebook)
• il 52% degli studenti afferma di aver ricevuto ispirazione per un determinato viaggio guardando le foto dei propri amici
• il 46% di essi invece afferma di essere stati invitati a prendere parte ad un viaggio attraverso Facebook
• il 45% e’ stimolato da Facebook a visitare amici all’estero
• 50 milioni di recensioni sono state create su Tripadvisor per circa 495,000 hotel

Qui sotto l’infografica completa 🙂

Amadeus Extreme Search – Un innovativo strumento per le agenzie di viaggio online

Pochi giorni fa Amadeus ha annunciato “Amadeus Extreme Search”, un’innovativa soluzione per agenzie di viaggio online (OTAs),  che credo rappresenti un’importante evoluzione del modo della ricerca/prenotazione di viaggi online.

Amadeus Extreme Search e’ destinata ad apportare numerosi benefici sia a chi viaggia (soprattutto in termini di semplicita’ e rapidita’), sia all’agenzia di viaggio stessa (in termini di branding, incremento delle conversioni sul sito, vantaggio competitivo e riduzione dei costi).

Lo strumento pone al centro il turista e le sue principali sfide/frustrazioni legate all’acquisto di viaggi sul web, consentendo di iniziare la propria ricerca partendo dall’esperienza di viaggio che si desidera prenotare.  Amadeus Extreme Search verra’ applicato inizialmente sulla ricerca dei voli, ma in un futuro non lontano, verranno aggiunti altri servizi ancillari quali treni ad alta velocità e compagnies low-cost.

L’agenzia di viaggi online “European Travel Interactive” (eTRAVELi) sara’ la prima a beneficiare della soluzione. Entro la fine dell’anno, MakeMyTrip.com, OTA leader in India,  adottera’ anch’essa questa soluzione.

Secondo Amadeus,  le agenzie di viaggio saranno in grado di catturare l’attenzione del viaggiatore sin dalle primissime fasi del processo di ricerca,  ispirandoli e al tempo stesso motivandoli verso la prenotazione.

Amadeus Extreme Search permettera’  infatti all’utente di porre domande aperte in tempo reale, come “dove posso andare in vacanza al mare in Europa a meno di € 600 per persona?”

Chi viaggia pertanto, non dovra’ piu’ iniziare con origine e destinazione in mente, ma potra’ invece lasciarsi ispirare in base al budget a disposizione, al tipo di attività o esperienza che desidera, il tutto proposto velocemente in una singola pagina di risultati  che si basano su disponibilità e prezzo in real-time.

Citando il sito ufficiale:

For years, the Internet has conditioned travellers to search for air travel online by entering their preferred dates, along with Origin and Destination (O&D) information. But there is no need for that anymore, now you can attract, inspire and engage travellers by offering a unique search experience and exciting travel ideas on your website.

La tecnologia sottostante Amadeus Extreme Search, che sfrutta la potentissima piattaforma di calcolo proprietaria, e’ in grado di processare miliardi di risultati sulla base della singola richiesta formulata.

Se volete saperne di piu’, vi congilio di dare un’occhiata al demo.