The global market for travel and tourism is estimated by the World Travel and Tourism Council (www.wttc.org) to be one of the world's largest industries. In 2005, the industry garnered in revenues in excess of $6 tn. The industry accounts for nearly 10% of all jobs globally (around 200 million), and represents more than 10% of the worldwide GDP. Jupiter Media's forecast for the online spending component of travel alone is $68 bn for 2005, growing to $104 bn in 2010 or about one-third of all spending pertaining to travel. In light of this, the market potential for Internet-based travel and tourism initiatives is simply enormous. The travel component focuses on transportation, and tourism touches museums, galleries, shops and hotels including walks, visits to monuments, sacred places and exotic holiday locations.
To date, much of the attention on online travel and tourism has been around price and transactions generated by suppliers of hotel inventory, airline tickets and car rentals. Online suppliers comprise not only hotel chains, airlines, cruise lines, railways, rental car companies and vacation packagers offering the product direct to consumers, but also online travel agencies/retailers (e.g., Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, Hotels.com, Cendant and Priceline). The focus on these supplier websites dealing with transactions will inevitably lead to further commoditization of travel. Meta-search engines including AOL's Kayak (www.kayak.com) promulgate commoditization further with searching capabilities for the best priced travel deals. What was once a purchase based on service and relationships in the physical world, has now become a commodity purchase. This simply misses the much bigger opportunity online providers can achieve.
|
