South Africans are increasingly catching on to the benefits of researching and booking their travel online, according to local travel and accommodation companies.
Cathy Farrow, senior specialist, leisure product, e-commerce at SAA, says online queries and transactions are showing a steady increase on flysaa.com. The new flysaa.com site with online booking facilities has shown steady growth since its launch in March last year, says Farrow. "We saw dramatic growth once our special Internet-only fares were put online."
Farrow says online ticket sales show an average increase of 34% each month, with 96% of the bookings in economy class. The number of unique users increases by an average of 27% per month. Around 164 000 statements are downloaded from the Internet each month by Voyager Club members.
British Airways (BA) says it South African registrations for e-mails about BA specials are growing by nearly 10% a month. John Westermeyer, BA e-business manager for Africa, says enrolments for BA`s online benefits and services are up by around 11% month-on-month.
Africa, often considered the least cyber-savvy continent, has the fourth largest e-mail database in the airline`s global network. Most of these addresses have a .co.za suffix.
Westermeyer says, that overall, online bookings have been down over the past few months, but that this is because of constrained capacity out of SA. He says the steady increase in e-ticketing bears out his contention that the decline has more to do with a lack of seats than a move away from electronic channels.
Online accommodation booking site lastminute.co.za also reports a healthy growth in online bookings and enquiries. MD Andrew Millar says the site operates completely online, with no call centre or telephonic booking facilities.
Selling luxury accommodation at reduced rates, the site sells on average 2 000 "bed nights" a month. Millar says sales increase by roughly 40% month-on-month.
"The fact that people are prepared to pay thousands of rands to make an online booking with no voice interaction proves that South Africans aren`t afraid to shop online," Millar says. "It is just a matter of whether the deal is right."
He says the site has 24 000 subscribers and a particularly high conversion rate from subscribers to buyers. "Invariably, once subscribers have taken the plunge and booked accommodation online, they become repeat buyers," he says. Millar foresees considerable growth in the online travel and accommodation booking market in SA.
Westermeyer says predicting the growth of online travel in SA is difficult, but he expects a tenfold growth over the next four years. Current constraints include the number of people who have credit cards, bandwidth problems and the fact that only 2.5 million South Africans have Internet access. Research shows that online travel revenue presently accounts for only 0.03% of the country`s total travel market.
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