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Hitwise Intelligence - Heather Hopkins - North America

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Southwest Airlines Sale Boosts Traffic Levels

March 26, 2009

Southwest Airlines launched a summer sale two weeks ago with one-way prices on domestic flights as low as $49. The site's share of US Internet visits have since jumped 22%. An article in yesterday's Wall Street Journal describing some of the challenges the airline is facing mentioned that after logging a 12% increase in revenue last year, Southwest's passenger traffic in January and February fell 10% from a year earlier. Internet usage data suggest the sale may help with a recovery.

The following chart shows the weekly market share of visits to Southwest.com from the first week of January to the week ending March 21 in both 2008 and 2009.

Southwest Sale.png

Notice that visits to Southwest had been declining to Southwest.com from the week ending January 31, 2009 to the week ending March 7, 2009 and were consistently below levels seen in 2008. With the announcement of the sale, visits shot upward, increasing 22% and are above levels seen in the same week last year. Hitwise clickstream data reveals that 20% of visits to Southwest.com continued to the travel.southwest.com area of the website where travel deals are described in detail - underscoring the importance of the sale to the recent lift in traffic.

Southwest's sale started on the heels of American Airlines' sale and both have spurred other airlines to move forward summer sales. The question is whether Southwest is outperforming the industry. The following chart shows Southwest.com's recent performance compared with the Commercial Airlines category. Notice that Southwest's lift has continued while the industry on average declined last week.
Southwest versus industry.png

Also, Southwest.com;s share of visits to the Commercial Airlines' category continues to increase at 26.05% last week, up from 25.20% the week before and 21.48% two weeks ago.

Posted by Heather Hopkins at 08:26 AM | (0) | (0)
In Categories Travel