Emerging new internet market: Canada
The time is right to enter the sometime-underestimated Canadian online travel market, according to a new report by online travel research firm PhoCusWright.
Canada’s online travel market is booming and is expected to nearly quadruple between 2004 and 2009, according to PhoCusWright’s first-ever study of Canada’s internet market.
One example: almost one third of all travel in Canada this year will be booked online for leisure and unmanaged business.
“But with a highly consolidated air market and fragmented hotel and car rental markets, Canada’s online travelers shop and buy travel very differently than their US counterparts,” says the study.
“Major global online travel players entering the market have had to adapt their models to suit Canadian tastes, while several Canadian travel suppliers, retailers and home-grown online travel entities have leveraged their knowledge of the market to capitalize on the growing shift to book travel online,” according to the report.
The report found:
- Canadian leisure and unmanaged business travel has more than doubled in two years to reach C$6.5 billion in 2006;
- The market is projected to nearly double again by 2009;
- The Internet is playing an increasingly significant role in both influencing consumer shopping and as a source of transactions.
For example, with a geographical climate more akin to that of Northern Europe than the varied US landscape, Canadians, like Europeans, are huge consumers of travel packages.
”Tour operators offering vacations to classic warm destinations in the Caribbean and Mexico play a large role in the Canadian leisure travel market, compared to the relatively small role of traditional tour operators in the US market,” says the report.
The dominant positions of Air Canada and WestJet airlines in a market where four airports account for almost 70% of all passenger traffic create a vastly different environment for scheduled air travel, compared to the relatively open skies of both the US and Europe.
The study also found that British Columbia spends significantly more online versus all regions but Ontario. Trip frequency was also the highest for those two regions, with online travellers taking an average of 3.9 trips in B.C. and 4.1 trips in Ontario.
Report by David Wilkening
David
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