US travel e-commerce sales exceeded $100 billion for the first time last year, reaching $103 billion, according to new figures from comScore. To put that figure in context, last year’s record retail (non-travel) e-commerce spend stood at roughly $186 billion, meaning that the online travel market is more than half the size of the retail market online. Overall, online travel sales grew by 9%, while retail e-commerce sales increased by 15%.
The majority share (65%) of online travel spending went to air travel, with sales reaching $66.5 billion, up 10% year-over-year. The next-biggest category, hotels, captured 19% of total spend, up 7% to $19.4 billion.
The comScore data includes a breakdown category leaders. Some of the highlights are provided below.
- Among airlines, SouthWest led with 20% of all category page views, followed by Delta (15.5%) and United (14.7%), which got a bump in traffic from Continental redirects beginning early in the year.
- Expedia topped the online travel agent category with 31.6% share of all category page views, though that was a significant decline from its leading 37.6% share last year. Priceline (up 1.6% points to 17.3%) and Orbitz (mostly flat at 12.9%) were next.
- In the hotel and resort properties category, Marriott led the pack with 11.7% share of all page views, inching down slightly from last year’s leading 11.8% share. InterContinental jumped into the second spot (7.9% share) on the back of a 3.5% point increase, overtaking Wyndham (7.5%) and Hilton (7%).
