The following is the sixth in the 2000 series of Travel Weekly consumer surveys, designed to gauge consumer behaviors and preferences affecting travel agents.
WASHINGTON -- Travel Weekly's latest consumer survey found that about a third of frequent travelers who are Internet savvy book all their travel on line.
In addition, when asked to characterize their most recent overnight air trip, the Web bookers said 71% of those trips were for leisure.
Readers are used to hearing bromides that say most leisure travel requires counseling before final choices are made, and so serious Net users would turn to agents or other counselors for some of those pleasure trips.
However, the Internet junkies identified in this survey, conducted by Plog Research, book all their trips on the Web.
The Web bookers are slightly younger than the average Net user and take fewer business trips, which may explain why the survey found that so much of their travel is leisure.
The "most recent trip" was defined as including a flight and at least one night in a hotel, so we don't know how complicated were the leisure itineraries booked via the Web.
However, we may surmise that this younger set takes relatively less complicated leisure trips or, perhaps more importantly, do not preplan many elements of those trips.
Travelers who booked exclusively with the Web accounted for 35% of the Net-savvy individuals surveyed, but another 36% said they use the Web for research but book exclusively through agents.
The remainder, 29%, use the Web for research but book with both agents and the Internet.
For all groups, when asked about their most recent overnight air trip, leisure travel accounted for more than half of their trips: 68% for those booking with agents only and 58% for those using both booking methods. The average was 66%.
The survey, conducted on line to ensure that respondents had access to the Internet, covered 537 consumers who took at least one trip with at least one overnight stay during the past 12 months. In fact, the respondents took an average of 9.8 trips in the past two years, making them eligible to be called frequent travelers.
The results do not mean that one-third of the population at large shuns travel agents and books exclusively through the Internet. The respondents in this particular survey had access to the Internet and were sufficiently comfortable with the Internet to use it for travel research, if not to book.
Looking at the Web-only bookers in the survey, it appears that agents may not succeed in prying the Internet users away from their computers, as they seem wedded to the Web for booking travel. Agents already have the second market, the people who use agents exclusively, sewed up.
So it is the third market, those travelers who swing between the Internet and agents for booking, that is most important and most susceptible to promotions mounted by agents.
Demographically, the ambivalent agent/Web users are an average age of 44. That is slightly older than the average 42 years of Web bookers and slightly younger than the average 49 years of agent users.
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of the agent/Web users are female vs. 54% for Web bookers and 61% for agent users.
Members of all three markets are well educated. All of the respondents have high school diplomas, about half have college degrees and 16% to 19% have post-graduate degrees.
But the third market, the agent/Web users, has the highest household income with an average of $74,200. Web-only bookers have an average $66,600 household income, while agent-only users have an average $67,500.
Significantly, the agent/Web users travel more often than the other two groups. They took an average of 13.2 trips in the past two years, compared with 7.4 trips for Web bookers and 9.3 trips for agent users.
They had the highest percentage of business travel, which accounted for 56% of all trips over the last two years. The figure for Web bookers was 47% and for agent users 54%.
The Web/agent users were predominantly female, well educated and had higher household incomes than the other groups. The agent/Web users traveled more often than the other groups and took more business trips.
The next article in this series will examine the reasons the agent/Web users decided to book with their agents on some occasions and to use the Internet on others.
A quick profile of respondents
WASHINGTON -- Plog Research conducted this latest survey for Travel Weekly to help understand the motivations and perceived trade-offs between booking on line and using a travel agent.
Plog Research called the study "dot-com vs. dot-bam," the latter a reference to brick-and-mortar agencies. The survey was conducted on the Internet among 537 travelers who took an average of 9.8 trips with at least one overnight stay in the past two years.
Of the 9.8 trips, 9.0 were domestic and 4.6 were leisure. The respondents were an average of 45 years old, and 59% of them were women.
Of the total group, 49% had college degrees and 18% had post-graduate degrees. The average household income was $69,000.
Two-thirds of the participants were married or engaged, 17% had never married, 10% were separated or divorced, 3% were widowed and 4% chose not to answer.
The survey interviews took place from April 28 through May 2.