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Hitwise Intelligence - Sandra Hanchard - Asia Pacific

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Trade Me to Launch into Travel - NZ Destinations & Accommodation Update

April 04, 2007

Trade Me's announcement that it would enter the tourism market has put the New Zealand Destinations & Accommodation online industry under the spotlight. While there certainly are opportunities within the online travel industry in NZ, Destinations & Accommodation is a highly competitive category, attracting more visits than Travel - Agency and Transport websites by New Zealand Internet users.

Hitwise tracked 5,840 websites in the Travel - Destinations & Accommodation category during March 2007, with the top websites accounting for 18.56% combined market share. Wotif.com was the leading website with 3.5% share, followed closely by Trip Advisor, New Zealand Tourism Online and AA New Zealand Travel Guide. The fact that 48% of visits to the Destinations & Accommodation category were delivered to local websites signifies a healthy interest in domestic travel by NZ Internet users. This compared to a local index of 29.5% in the Singapore market.

There were 16,612 unique search term variations on 'accommodation' by NZ Internet users, week ending 31 March 2007. The most common variations on 'accommodation' including NZ destinations were, 'raglan', 'queenstown', 'waiheke', 'wellington', 'taupo', 'rotorua', 'auckland' and 'christchurch'. Search queries for tourist destinations can be used by travel websites to prioritise accommodation operators for online partnerships.

Google NZ was the highest referrer of traffic to the Travel - Destinations & Accommodation category for March 2007, accounting for 29.83% upstream traffic. Trade Me's online dominance was reflected by its position as 4th highest referrer to the Destinations & Accommodation, while TripAdvisor was the most influential travel website ranked 7th in referrals. The influence of social networking was also evident with Bebo ranked #10 amongst upstream websites.

There are several online partner opportunities for accommodation websites. Hitwise Clickstream traffic indicates that accommodation websites send a relatively low volume of traffic to the Flowers & Gifts industry, indicating that there are opportunities for more online gift packages incorporating travel. RedBalloon Days has made inroads into penetrating this market, receiving the highest referrals of traffic from accommodation websites, and ranking as the top local website in the Flowers & Gifts category in March 2007.