World’s Top Tourism Earners 2009

Ranking
	Country
1.	United States
2.	Spain
3.	France
4.	Italy
5.	China
6.	Germany
7.	United Kingdom
8.	Australia
9.	Turkey
10.	Austria

Website Usability – Major Criterion For Online Bookers

According to a January 2010 PhoCusWright survey of US online travel bookers,

website usability was a major criterion for successful online booking. The "Hospitality & Tourism Industry Report, Q4 2009" confirms that convenient, hassle-free websites with high measures of responsiveness led to the most completed online bookings.

The reasons that US online travel bookers do not complete online transactions were:

- Final product price and/or fees were high: 43%

- Did not want to register with the website: 11%

- Not enough inventory: 11%

- Website was too slow/took too long: 11%

- Website was asking for too much information: 9%

- Website was frustrating/confusing to use: 9%

- Checkout process was too long or confusing: 6%

- Unwilling/unable to give credit card information online: 6%

- Website crashed/Webpage froze/received error page: 5%

- Others: 3%

- Have never abandoned site from which purchase was intended: 30%

Business travellers, who face problems from a site would immediately turn to a competing travel site (23%) and tell friends, family and co-workers about their bad experience (14%).

World’s Top Tourism Destinations 2009

Ranking
	Country
1.	France
2.	United States
3.	Spain
4.	China
5.	Italy
6.	United Kingdom
7.	Turkey
8.	Germany
9.	Malaysia
10.	Mexico

Intra European Travel To Outperform Long Haul

Travel to/within Europe is expected to grow over 2% in 2010. Intra-European travel is forecasted to outperform long haul again as consumer confidence and the labour market remain weak.

Intra-European travel proved more stable in 2009 relative to long haul markets. This accounted for the relatively strong performance of destinations nearest their main source markets. Within Western Europe, the Netherlands, Austria, Germany, and Switzerland across Europe have registered losses only between 2.4% and 4.1%. This relatively good performance is connected to the trend toward shorter trips, which has regionalized travel among these countries.

Nine Indian Spots In Top 25 Asian Destinations

Nine Indian destinations made it to the top 25 Asian destination choice list of Trip Advisor Travelers’ Choice. The destinations are Munnar (2), Andaman and Nicobar Islands (6), Manali (7), Hampi (8), Goa (9), Udaipur (12), Gangtok (19), Bangalore (20) and Dharamsala (22). Winners were determined by a combination of travellers’ destination comments, favorite places, and overall destination popularity on TripAdvisor.

Now in its eighth year, the annual TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice Awards honour the world’s best destinations.

International Tourism: Up 7% on 2009

According to the April Interim Update of the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, international tourist arrivals are estimated to have increased by 7% in the first two months of 2010. This follows the upturn already registered in the last quarter of 2009 when arrivals grew by 2% after 14 consecutive months of negative results.

Growth was positive in all world regions during the first two months of 2010 led by Asia and the Pacific (+10%) and Africa (+7%). Middle East also has a strong rebound though compared to very subdued first months of 2009. The pace of growth was slower in Europe (+3%) and in the Americas (+3%).

Of the 77 destinations reporting data, 60 showed positive figures, of which 24 posted double-digit growth including Estonia, Israel, Hong Kong (China), Macao (China), Japan, Taiwan (pr. of China), Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, Guam, India, Nepal, Sri Lanka, US Virgin Islands, Nicaragua, Ecuador, Kenya, Seychelles, Morocco, Egypt and Saudi Arabia.

On the whole, international tourist arrivals totalled 119 million during the first two months of 2010.

Indian domestic air traffic soars 20 per cent

Domestic air traffic saw a growth of over 20 per cent growth between January and March 2010, with airlines carrying over 11.80mn pax, compared to less than 10mn pax in same quarter of 2009 according to data released by the Directorate General of Civil Aviation (DGCA).

Budget carriers led the growth since June 2009. The combined market share of Low Cost Carriers (LCCs) like IndiGo, SpiceJet, JetLite and Go Air is nearly 40 per cent. With Jet and Kingfisher deploying almost 70-80 per cent of their domestic fleet on budget brands like Jet Konnect and Kingfisher Red, the share of LCC is close to 70 per cent now.