Hitwise is scaring the hell out of the everyone today with data from the week ending 5 January 2009 showing that flight searches in hte UK were down 42.4% on the same week 12 months before.
Searches to the US and Eurozone countries have falled significantly (USA down 52.2%, Eurozone (down 44.8%) while their non-Euro counterparts fair slightly better (RoW down 34.4%, UK domestic down 32.7%).
Within an hour or so of one particular article in FT earlier today, one of the companies who would be less than impressed with such a slump was on the phone suggesting that the figures should be given more thought.
This is their analysis:
The most recent week ending 5 January had only one proper day when people would be back at work from the Christmas break and browsing the web, Monday 5 January.
In contrast the week ending 5 January 2008 had arguably three days when the majority of people had returned to work and resumed normal behaviour, Wednesday 2 to Friday 4 January.
It is a valid point.
Various surveys show that many consumers use their lunch breaks at work and at other idle times (Is this right?!? Ed) to conduct searches for travel, before booking later in the evening.
During the Christmas break, however, users were either at home or out and about visiting friends and family, or spending their way through the New Year retail sales.
This might go some way to explaining the slump, but surely this can't account for such dramatic falls in searches?
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Hi Kevin - a number of other people have pointed this out too, and I can see where you're coming from.
This is the answer I've posted on our blog:
Making year on year comparisons is always tricky at this time of year because important days (Christmas Day, Boxing Day, News Year’s Day, first day back in the office) always fall at different times. (What can’t we have a 364 day year? Life would be so much easier!)
However, here is the reason why we are pretty confident of this data. January is a busy time for the travel industry, but January effectively starts in late December online, as people flock to travel sites straight after Christmas. Therefore, despite how the days fall, we are already well into the increase in travel related web traffic. Flight searches have been increasing on a weekly basis for 2 weeks now (between 20/12/08 & 27/12/08 and 27/12/08 & 03/01/09), and comparing seasonal increases this year to last year they are quite similar.
For the key week we are discussing, the weekly increase this year between and 27/12/08 & 03/01/09 was 57.5%, whereas last year the increase between 29/12/07 & 05/01/08and 52.5%. In other words, the weekly change in search volume was very similar for both years, implying that the behavior was actually very similar.
Of course, I admit that we have been a bit of a victim of our approach here: we led with the total drop, when actually the interesting part of the story is the shift in destinations away from Europe/US to other, relatively cheaper locations.
I also promise to revisit the data next week and at the end of January to see how it plays out.
Robin Goad
Research Director
Hitwise UK
@ Kevin – this might be a stupid question but do you put flight comparison sites in the same tag as flight search engines? I have some thoughts on this from a consumer perspective, going to write about it.
As far as Hitwise is concerned they would lump them all together, thus why Cheapflights appears on the same list as Kayak, although one is very different from the other.
They also appear on the same list as OTAs.
From a consumer perspective I would put flight search engines alongside price comparison sites as the mechanics (ads or feeds/scrapes) behind the scenes are not readily apparent.
Hi Kevin,
Our own search data certainly suggests that things are no where near as bad as the Hitwise report suggests.
We've seen a 12% rise in UK traffic, and an overall rise of 32%.
We've written a release about this here:
http://news.skyscanner.net/articles/2009/01/000865-online-travel-outlook-more-optimistic-than-feared-says-skyscanner.html
Sam
www.Skyscanner.net
Hi Kevin,
Our statiscs show a 12% increase in searches, hence a very positive outlook.
I presume the problem with Hitwise data is that they combine OTAs with flight search engines and do not differentiate between traditional and budget flights. We specialise in budget airlines, hence are targeting a niche which continues to grow. Even in the time of crisis, it is the high-luxury and the rock-bottom markets which are flourishing.
Regards,
Martino Matijevic
CEO, WhichBudget
www.whichbudget.com