This is a post we have been hoping to write for a very long time, perhaps since the opening of this blog. Thanks to the launch of Google Trends for websites – we are now able to get verified statistics for European websites too, and even enjoy the ability of creating a country based review on each website.
This change of events allows us to publish a world exclusive review of the real scale of visitors to the travel reservations websites in Europe. We will try and let the graphs do most of the talking.
1. How popular are the leading OTA and TSE across the Atlantic?
In order to create this graph we used the top 3 services in each country. Europe is represented by Germany, France, Spain, Italy, Belgium and The Netherlands. The online travel agencies used are: Expedia (in every market), Opodo, Ebookers, Travelocity, Orbitz, Cheaptickets, Edreams (in various markets). The travel search engines used: Kayak and Skyscanner in every market, Momondo, Sprice, Billigfliger (according to their leadership position in the market).
This review reveals the missed potential of both travel agencies and travel search engines in Continental Europe. The large European OTA are nowhere near the dominance Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity posses in the United States. The case for travel search engines is even worse with the potential squeezed at less than 1/5 of its comparative size in the U.S. This might come as a surprise given Europe’s far larger diversion in suppliers which should create a need for travel comparison services. Our explanation is simple: none of the existing services is able to give enough value in a market dominated by suppliers websites. TSE search results are closely tied to OTA, and when the latter don’t add enough value – the case for TSE is similar. Examples of European search engines that compare only travel agencies sites (such as Sprice.com) show that this notion is not yet understood. See Sprice’s jumping (during ad campaign) and dropping (during holiday reservations season) visitors graph for indication.
2. Can Kayak succeed in Europe the way it did in the U.S?
In order to retrieve this info we compared the leading travel search engines in the following markets: UK, Germany, France, Italy, Spain, Belgium and The Netherlands – and added the data together. The review was made using Google Trends based on May 2008 data. The data for Kayak includes its international domain (Kayak.com) or local domains in every market. The ‘others’ column includes data taken from Sprice.com, Billigflieger.de, Momondo.com and Mobissimo.com.
This data for Kayak is quite straightforward and it shows that despite launching dedicated websites in the UK, Germany, France, Spain and Italy in the past two years, Kayak has not managed to capture a significant European audience and is trailing in every European market behind either Skyscanner.net or a local operator.
3. What does the European leading travel search website looks like?
This screen shot is taken from Skyscanner report on Google Trends, and it reveals the site’s quiet success. As far as Google’s data goes, Skyscanner is more popular than Kayak in every European market, and its quite widely spread across the continent, in a way no other travel brand besides Expedia has managed to do, and with perhaps a percent of the financial investment.
Hence, Skyscanner is the role model for those who wish to enter the European travel search scene. We believe it is successful for simply doing three things:
1. It offers a service that connects consumers directly with the airlines websites.
2. Presenting fast response and simple user interface.
3. Absolutely not relying on online travel agencies in the search results.
So, if Skyscanner is the rolemodel, why do everyone try to copy Kayak.com?
Beats us. And the users too.
