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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Frequent Flyers and Home Loans

April 05, 2006

On researching the Australian travel industry this week, one of the points that came up was the external factors affecting the average consumer's capacity to travel. It's common sense that debt is a key determinant. A highly competitive home loans market in Australia (refer to the Hitwise Australian Finance report) and recent launch here of Virgin Home Loans led me to question what opportunities travel operators had on partnering with home loan providers to capture consumers' disposable income.

Offering a travel rewards program, for airline frequent flyer points, car hire or accommodation, tied in with paying off a home loan quicker seems like a smart strategy at this point in time. The below chart shows a substantial increase in online searches for 'home loans' and 'frequent flyer':

AU Share of Searches on 'home loans' (left-axis) and 'frequent flyer' (right-axis):

As you can see, there has been an upward trend in searches on both terms in the most recent 6 months. Also interesting to note that 'home loans' peaked week ending January 7, 2006, the same time period of peak visits to the Airlines category (see an earlier post of mine this year). Any thoughts on this correlation welcome.

Posted by Sandra Hanchard at 10:37 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Banks and Financial Institutions | Travel