Online travel agency Expedia receives traffic from just over one out of every four clicks (both paid and natural) to a major OTA from search.

Published: 17 Sep 2008

Online travel agency Expedia receives traffic from just over one out of every four clicks (both paid and natural) to a major OTA from search.

According to web analytics company Compete, Expedia (leads with 26 percent share of all the searches among the seven major OTA's from July 2007- July 2008) is followed by Travelocity (around 19 percent) and Orbitz (around 15 percent). Priceline has moved into the fourth position by growing its share by nearly five percent, replacing Cheaptickets, which has fallen by almost the same percentage.

In terms of 36 percent of all search traffic to OTAs comes through sponsored links. Hotels.com leads the way with an average of 44 percent of search referrals coming from paid search.

Expedia is also in the advantageous position of being on the lower end of paid search percentage (34 percent), despite having such a large search share.

Compete highlighted that with ever increasing ROI expectations being placed on travel marketers, optimising the online channel is critical. Given that many of the OTAs are relying more heavily on paid search referrals, and the degree of volatility in this space, it would benefit the OTAs to closely monitor share of search traffic across the competitive landscape.