ONLINE AIRLINE TICKET SALES will total $19 billion
in 2003, a 14% increase over the $16.8 billion in tickets sold
online in 2002, projects Jupiter Research. Jupiter said this
increase will occur even though the number of airline passengers is
expected to decrease by 5% in 2003. The growth in online bookings
doesn't signal a financial turnaround for major network airlines,
who still face a slow economy, depressed business travel and fierce
competition from low-cost carriers, Jupiter noted.
MEANWHILE, COMSCORE NETWORKS, another online
research firm, reports that U.S. travelers spent nearly $13 billion
on the Internet from the beginning of 2003 to May 4, a 28% increase
over the same time period last year. In April alone, comScore said
66 million Americans--45% of the online population--visited travel
Web sites. Travel planning is particularly popular at work, with
51% of workplace Web surfers visiting travel sites, comScore said.
This compares to 38% of home users and 41% of university users.
EXPEDIA CORPORATE TRAVEL [www.expedia.com/daily/corporate/default.asp],
confirming what many observers expected, said it will pursue large
corporations by adding policy-control tools and enhancing reporting
technology in its self-booking system in June. Corporations will be
able to display negotiated rates for air, car and hotel on the same
screen as Web fares, published fares and Expedia's merchant hotel
rates. Corporations may ensure their negotiated rates are listed
first on the display, said Expedia. Travel managers also will be
able to create multiple traveler groups and establish exception
codes, which details reasons why a traveler can break travel
policy. Exception codes can be customized by the type of travel
(air, car or hotel) and by corporate department, Expedia said.
NAVIGANT INTERNATIONAL rolled out its WebFLYR
tool, which enables travel agents to search and book Orbitz fares
from their GDS workstations. In addition, Aqua Software [www.aspisoft.com]--the Navigant subsidiary that
created and developed WebFLYR--began selling the tool to other
agencies under the AquaQuest brand. Garber Travel [www.garbertravel.com], a $350 million agency
headquartered in Boston, is the first non-Navigant customer to
implement AquaQuest. Joan Kaplan, Garber's executive vp, said five
clients are using the tool, and that in the two weeks AquaQuest has
been in use, the agency has found several fares that are lower in
Orbitz than in the agency's GDS. So far, Garber has been able to
replicate every one of those lower fares in Sabre and process them
through the GDS, said Kaplan. She explained that Sabre doesn't list
all the possible routings since they usually don't appeal to
time-sensitive travelers. "But it's important to show the client
that we know what the lowest fare is," Kaplan said.
GALILEO is making its Web Services platform
available to travel companies in Europe as well as North America.
Web Services enables companies to streamline the integration of
divergent systems using an XML.