The online travel market in Europe is currently estimated at €50 billion, according to an EyeforTravel Research report; and has been growing at an astounding rate of 41% CAGR (compound annual growth rate) in 2002-2007. At the same time offline travel expenditure has remained static.
WorkLight, the Web 2.0 specialist, is urging the European online travel industry to take advantage of the benefits of Web 2.0 technology, as online booking continues to grow. Worklight believes that with 1 in every 5 travellers making travel arrangements and booking flights and hotel rooms online, in this competitive market, companies need to take advantage of Web 2.0 services, such as personalized homepages, social networks, RSS, desktop gadgets and others.
Popular services such as iGoogle, Facebook, Yahoo Widgets, etc, have the unique ability to engage customers and partners in the places where they spend their time online. Companies can provide a better service, while customers can easily track and book flights and hotels, manage account activities, all without adding any overhead to their online experience.
In addition, other research by HotelBlogs found that Hotel rooms were the most popular component of online travel shoppers in 2007, as well as the fact that 50% of travellers used the same outlet for planning and booking their business and leisure travel.
WorkLight indicates that companies considering secure Web 2.0 solutions should ensure that customer data is secured and privacy concerns are respected, as the security risks associated with using Web 2.0 are still unknown to most firms, so it is important to make sure that any solution deployed provides enterprise-class security, in addition to consumer-class ease of use. (TravelDailyNews, September 2008)
