The global travel and tourism industry was responsible for generating over 7.6 trillion USD back in 2016, and the numbers have since grown by leaps and bounds, making travel and tourism one of the biggest and fastest growing industries by the end of 2018. The role of travel websites has been instrumental in producing this astounding growth in the industry, as was evidenced in the last few years and especially in 2018.
More than Eighty Percent of the Bookings Were Made Online in 2018
As pointed out by StatusCake in their detailed report on the average performance and availability of travel websites during a peak month of 2019, about 81% of the global travellers and tourists booked their holidays via the internet and through travel websites last year.
StatusCake further stresses on the importance of travel websites maintaining a high uptime and fluidity, by pointing out that about 79% of the people who have had an unpleasant experience while trying to book tickets, hotel rooms, etc. via a travel website, are unlikely to use or even visit that same site in the future. Just as the report cements the profound impact of online booking on global tourism, it also clearly highlights the fact that the performance of various travel websites is quite directly connected to their uptime, loading speeds, and fluidity of navigation.
Carnival Corporation and PLC Stands at the Top of the Performance Chart
After going through the rankings by StatusCake, which calculated the best performing travel website by taking loading speed and uptime into account, it was seen that Carnivalcorp.com managed to top the chart with a load time of 0.08 seconds, which is ahead of the average consumer threshold of two seconds by a huge margin. While Easycruise.com was found to be only negligibly slower at 0.09 seconds, from there onwards, the performance gap becomes quite wide. It is to be noted that the load time was only taken into account when a travel site managed to demonstrate a reliable uptime of 100%, rather than the industry average of 99.91%. Of course, the results may vary once the year progresses and the analysis is based on vast long-term data but given that the test was conducted during one of the two busiest months for the tourism industry, the data is quite valid and to the point.
The Average Uptime of the Travel Sites Still Leaves Room for Improvement
The average uptime of tourism websites during the one-month period of testing is at 99.91%, and while that number looks impressive on paper, there is still a lot of room for improvement because the remaining 0.09% equates to more than six hours of downtime every month. On an annual basis, this would mean that travel sites on an average are losing out on more than seventy-two entire hours of business. Seeing First Choice having a relatively low uptime of only 99.29% was surprising, given the site’s status as a major player in the online tourism industry.
In the year 2019, it is expected that even more people will be using online resources to book their flights, rooms, and other conveniences, which is expected to take the percentage much higher than the already impressive 81% figure which was seen last year.
Image Credits: Frank McKenna
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