Farewell Webjet, Adios Wotif; Not quite, just joking, but they are no longer top of the heap....
Booking.com is now Australia's biggest and fast-fastest growing online travel agent, leaving local rivals well behind with more than 5.3m visits a month.
The US-owned website surged to come in at #4 in the 2013 edition of the Hottest 100 Australian travel sites from Experian Hitwise and TravelTrends.biz (see below).
It was a surprise result. Booking.com has been closing on the pack for the last couple of years – spending big but smart on search – however, the #1 OTA ranking result has come sooner than expected.
The Hottest 100 is being used to help source sites for the TRAVELtech GlobalCollect Web Awards, the winner of which will be announced at the second day of TRAVELtech on September 13.
It's based on web visits and market share in the 12 months to the end of July, and showed a tightening but still growing market place where the top 30 sites all get more than one million visits each month.
To get in the top ten, a minimum four million monthly visits were required, while entry to the Top 100 needed 290k visits, 50% more than two years ago.
Once again Google Maps with 33m monthly visits was by far and away the #1 site, well ahead of Tripdvisor.com (9m), closely followed by Qantas.
Then Booking.com – now the highest-ever ranked OTA.
The out-performance of Booking.com also goes some way to explaining the recent flat performance of the local incumbents, Wotif and Webjet.
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