SHERMAN, CT - In the beginning of the online travel boom, bookings were the name of the game. In the past few years, however, nontransactional Web sites have been vying for the consumer's attention. Companies no longer need to sell travel to be a major online travel player, and many don't actually generate any revenue until consumers leave their site. Online brands now can rely on advertising, referral payments and other nontraditional revenue to succeed. Attractions like user reviews and deals listings are resonating with travelers and nontransactional Web sites are growing steadily.

Findings from PhoCusWright's Online Traffic and Conversion Report show that the growing number of nontransactional sites has begun to siphon consumers from transactional sites during the earlier phases of travel planning. The study, conducted in partnership with Compete Inc., found that over the past few years, traffic to nontransactional sites has increased from 29% of all travel category visitations to 33%. Sites in the metasearch, planning and reviews, lead generators, destination and tourism, and travel guides categories clearly play a role in influencing travelers, and impact both traffic and conversion rates on transactional sites.

There are many different types of nontransactional Web site categories, each filling a particular role in the search, shop, buy process. Lead generators—such as TravelZoo and BookingBuddy.com—represent the largest nontransactional category, though they experienced a noticeable decline in 2009. These sites received nearly 15 million unique monthly visitors on average in 2Q 2009. The decline in traffic to lead generator sites was likely caused in part by the increased popularity of metasearch sites—which have sustained substantial traffic increases—contributing significantly to the growth of the nontransactional category as a whole. The category with the most dramatic growth trajectory is planning and reviews, which has doubled its traffic over two years. The travel guides category has also posted gains, adding over four million unique monthly visitors since 2Q 2007. The only nontransactional category that has remained relatively stagnant is the destination and tourism category, consisting of destination marketing organizations and other destination-specific travel Web sites.

Nontransactional Web sites are beginning to lessen consumers' reliance on the major OTAs for product information. This certainly does not mean that OTAs have lost consumer value, but the travel planning process has become less linear over time, with multiple categories of travel sites forming a complex web that leads ultimately to a transaction.

Copyright 2009 PhoCusWright Inc. All rights reserved. From http://www.phocuswright.com.
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