Hitwise monthly report for October 2008 "Travel" category!

[Ali Etemadi]

Attached is Hitwise monthly report for month of October "Travel" category of US internet Usage.

Below is the top 20 travel website that was visited:

1. MapQuest www.mapquest.com 13.06% 1 1 1
2. Google Maps maps.google.com 10.01% 2 2 2
3. Yahoo! Maps maps.yahoo.com 3.32% 3 4 4
4. Expedia www.expedia.com 2.64% 4 3 3
5. Southwest Airlines www.southwest.com 2.56% 5 5 5
6. Travelocity www.travelocity.com 2.06% 6 6 6
7. Orbitz www.orbitz.com 1.65% 7 7 7
8. Priceline.com www.priceline.com 1.57% 9 8 8
9. Yahoo! Travel travel.yahoo.com 1.54% 8 9 9
10. Cheap Tickets www.cheaptickets.com 1.15% 10 10 10
11. American Airlines www.aa.com 1.11% 11 12 14
12. Delta Air Lines www.delta.com 1.05% 12 13 15
13. Local Live local.live.com 0.97% 14 16 18
14. TripAdvisor www.tripadvisor.com 0.97% 13 11 11
15. Hotwire www.hotwire.com 0.84% 15 15 12
16. CheapoAir.com www.cheapoair.com 0.80% 17 25 20
17. Kayak www.kayak.com 0.80% 16 17 16
18. Northwest Airlines www.nwa.com 0.72% 19 21 21
19. United Airlines www.united.com 0.68% 20 20 25
20. Hotels.com www.hotels.com 0.67% 18 14 13

It is interesting to see what users visit online when making their travel arrangements.

What can we do with this data?

How do I list my hotels on MapQuest since it is the number 1 choice of travel website? Does MapQuest have a sponsorship program that we can participate and would it be worth it?


Please post any question or suggestion you have to this discussion.

[Ron Callari]

It's interesting to note that while several airlines are listed in the TOP 20, not one hotel brand made the list. As far as MapQuest, I am sure there are sponsorship programs that can provide you listings, banner ads,etc that are geared to certain geographic areas, where your hotel ads would appear ONLY when someone is asking for maps or directions within a 100 mile radius of one of your hotels. As far as the cost, perhaps one of our other members would have this data?

[kbradshaw]

I don't buy into these Hitwise reports. They have never given me a solid answer on their "sample set" of ISP based users, or their locations. Provide more data besides % share and we can dive into greater detail. Do they give total visits?

I also discredit these "Travel" category reports and like to focus on Hotel specific.

One thing is clear regardless, the infusion of local results and map listings has changed the SE landscape and shopping habits.

[Ali Etemadi]

Good morning,

Unfortunately, since I don't have an account with Hitwise, I really don't have access to the actual data that I can pull reports. The last time I check, Hitwise had an annual cost of $3,000 (I think) to have access to their data. Perhaps, we can collectively put our resources together to get an account and be able to get monthly reports of the "Travel Industry" internet searches.

A couple of months ago, I was also thinking of getting access to other reports from Phocuse Wrigth Market Research online reports but these reports are expensive for us.

I realize that this forum is a free forum for all of us to share information and tips but this can only go so far. I think if we can somehow combine our resources together we may be able to get updated information by having access to some of these research data for all of us to use.

Any thoughts?