BOSTON -- Orbitz
attracted droves of consumers during its first week of operation
last month, but less than 1% of visitors to the site actually made
a booking, according to a study by Compete, an on-line consulting
company here.
The firm studied Internet traffic June 4 to 10 for Orbitz, Travelocity
and Expedia.
Compete gets this clickstream -- or Web page view -- data through
licenses with ISPs and browser services.
Among Compete's findings:
Orbitz's 2.02 million visitors topped Travelocity's 1.74
million. Expedia attracted the most visitors, 2.52 million.The look-to-book conversion rates were Travelocity, 4.3%;
Expedia 1.9%, and Orbitz, less than 1%.Consumers are comparison-shopping on the three sites. Although
11.2% and 10.6% of Orbitz visitors also visited Expedia and
Travelocity, respectively, the most active traffic overlap was
between Expedia and Travelocity.Some 18.4% of Expedia visitors also checked out Travelocity, and
26.6% of Travelocity visitors surfed over to Expedia. Compete,
which is backed by Charles River Ventures and Idealab, said it
funded the study itself.
The company believes that Orbitz will soon surpass Expedia in
volumes of unique visitors but that traffic will drop off when
Orbitz finishes running an hourly free-travel promotion.
"Nearly half its visitors sign up for the giveaway (1 million
people during launch week)," according to Compete. "This is
promising to the extent that it builds a potential customer base
for Orbitz.
"The danger is that Orbitz has attracted the 'wrong' people --
i.e., people less apt to buy on line, but [who are] only interested
in winning free travel."