Tripadvisor, Booking.com and Qantas leading for travel website visits
Often when planning their next trip, Australians turn online to find comparable rates for their holiday. These websites can offer packages that are frictionless, and include deals on travel insurance, accommodation, flights, and car hire.
The Roy Morgan Travel Agent Monitor Market Indicator Report reveals tripadvisor.com.au is the number one website for Australians to visit when planning a holiday, with 15.7% of Australians aged 14+ visiting the website in an average 4 weeks. Booking.com and Qantas were the second and third travel websites with visitations in an average 4 weeks at 13.6% and 13.5% respectively.
Travel websites visited in the last 4 weeks (Top 15)
Source: Roy Morgan Holiday Tracking Survey – January 2017 – December 2017, n = 15,220. Base: Australians 14+.
Travel Agents most used for booking last overseas trip
The Travel Agent Monitor Report reveals while online may be increasing as the dominant information source used for planning overseas and domestic trips, when it comes to booking trips overseas most Australians choose to use a travel agent instead of an online only website.
While it may be simple enough to book your accommodation directly for a domestic holiday, it can get complicated and overwhelming booking an overseas trip, especially if there are multiple destinations, stopovers, and peak holiday times to contend with.
Many Australians turn to their travel agent to organise their trip in a concise way to keep their itinerary in check, and even pay for multiple accommodation bookings in a single purchase. 42.5% of Australians aged 14+ used a travel agent to book their last overseas trip in the 12 months to December.
This is significantly more than online only travel booking websites, which 15.5% of travellers used on their last trip overseas.
Booking sources used for last holiday or leisure trip1
Source: Roy Morgan Holiday Tracking Survey, January 2017 – December 2017; n = 9,996. Base: Australians aged 14+ who took a holiday or leisure trip in the last 12 months. 1. A respondent can be counted more than once as they can provide multiple responses to this question.
Michele Levine, CEO, Roy Morgan, says:
“Travel agents operate in a highly competitive industry, having to contend with a complex marketplace such as bricks and mortar shops, online, and surging technologies such as Airbnb.
“The popularity of online comparison websites when planning a holiday is continuing to trend upward, with websites like tripadvisor.com.au, Booking.com, and Qantas being visited the most in an average 4 week period.
“The Travel Agent Monitor Market Indicator Report benefits travel agents, tour operators, and online only travel booking websites, by tracking their performance over time relative to their competitors in terms of brand awareness, advertising awareness, usage, consideration and loyalty. The report also shows how the Internet has changed the way Australians are booking their holiday and leisure travel, and details which travel websites Australians have visited in the last 4 weeks.”
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Roy Morgan - Enquiries
Office: +61 (03) 9224 5309
askroymorgan@roymorgan.com
Margin of Error
The margin of error to be allowed for in any estimate depends mainly on the number of interviews on which it is based. Margin of error gives indications of the likely range within which estimates would be 95% likely to fall, expressed as the number of percentage points above or below the actual estimate. Allowance for design effects (such as stratification and weighting) should be made as appropriate.
| Sample Size | Percentage Estimate |
| 40% – 60% | 25% or 75% | 10% or 90% | 5% or 95% | |
| 1,000 | ±3.0 | ±2.7 | ±1.9 | ±1.3 |
| 5,000 | ±1.4 | ±1.2 | ±0.8 | ±0.6 |
| 7,500 | ±1.1 | ±1.0 | ±0.7 | ±0.5 |
| 10,000 | ±1.0 | ±0.9 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 |
| 20,000 | ±0.7 | ±0.6 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 |
| 50,000 | ±0.4 | ±0.4 | ±0.3 | ±0.2 |
