More clicking for holidays

Online sites see spike in bookings even as travel firms struggle to come out of slump

INTERNET-SAVVY travellers are double-clicking their way to holidays in droves, even as the travel industry in Singapore wrestles with the economic credit crunch. An average of 1,997 bookings per month have been made on Asiatravel.com so far this year, up from 1,408 bookings a month last year – an increase of 70.5 per cent. In the past two months, hotel and flight bookings at Zuji Singapore increased 10 per cent year- on-year.

Hotelclub.com has also seen bookings made in Singapore go up 20 per cent in the first half of this year compared to the same time last year. This is backed by Wego.com, an online travel search engine, which recorded a 50 per cent increase in flight clicks and almost double the number of hotel clicks from Singapore so far this year compared to the same time last year. Just who are these people snapping up the various travel deals online? They are mostly made up of white-collar workers, aged 25 to 44, with a monthly personal income of $3,000 and above. The heightened interest, say industry experts, is due to increased confidence in Internet security, high Internet penetration, cost and convenience. ‘Customers compare prices online, then mix and match to get cheaper packages. Some deals can be as much as 20 per cent cheaper,’ said Singapore Polytechnic business lecturer Randy Ng, who specialises in electronic commerce. ‘It is also convenient, bookings can be made any time and customers need not wait for a travel agency to open, or stand in line.’ This comes at a time when traditional bricks-and-mortar agencies struggle to recover from the hit they took earlier in the year when business fell 40 per cent across the board, said National Association of Travel Agents chief executive Robert Khoo. This is a stark contrast to growth in the online travel booking segment in Asia, which has seen bookings rise 30 per cent in the second quarter of this year compared to the previous quarter, according to recent statistics from Abacus International, provider of travel information in the region.

SOURCE :
Sep 12, 2009
By Jessica Lim
http://www.straitstimes.com/Breaking%2BNews/Singapore/Story/STIStory_428813.html