Regional Airlines and Online Travel Agent Sites Witness Sizeable Gains as Consumers Shop for Best Travel Deals

  – comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR), a leader in measuring the digital world, today released a study on visitation to online Travel sites in Singapore, which found that more than 40 percent of Singapore’s Web population visited a Travel site in January. Nearly 1.2 million total people in Singapore visited the Travel category, marking an all-time high for the category and representing a 44-percent increase versus year ago.

“The number of visitors to Travel sites has surged in the past year as consumers increasingly turn to the Internet for travel deals and booking flights,” said Joe Nguyen, comScore vice president of Southeast Asia. “In January, three out of five travel category visitors browsed two or more sites in the category, which suggests that consumers are being very diligent in comparing prices prior to purchase. Consumers are clearly being more cost-conscious these days, which is creating a more competitive environment among online travel agents and suppliers as they vie for consumer loyalty and share of wallet.”

Tiger Airways is the Most Visited Airline Site in Singapore

Almost 1.2 million people visited an online travel site in January 2010, representing an increase of 44 percent from the previous year, as each of the top 10 most-visited travel destinations posted double or triple-digit gains. Online mapping and travel guide site Streetdirectory was the most visited Travel destination with 475,000 unique visitors, up 33 percent from the previous year. Nearly half of the top 10 positions were occupied by regional and local airline brands, including Tiger Airways with 197,000 visitors in January (up 99 percent versus year ago), Qantas Airlines with 166,000 visitors (up 122 percent), Singapore Airlines with 145,000 visitors (up 29 percent) and AirAsia.com with 137,000 visitors ( up 132 percent).

25-44 Year Olds Account for More than Half of the Visitors to Travel Sites

A demographic analysis of visitors to Travel sites revealed that 25-44 year olds account for 53.5 percent of visitors to these destinations, with visitors age 45-54 composing 19.5 percent and 15-24 year olds accounting for 17.5 percent of traffic. This demographic breakdown suggest, perhaps unsurprisingly, that many visitors to travel sites are working professionals who utilize these sites for business travel, on a global, regional and local basis. Females accounted for a slightly larger proportion of visitors to Travel sites, representing 51.9 percent of visitors compared to 48.1 percent males.

*Excludes visitation from public computers such as Internet cafes or access from mobile phones or PDAs.

comScore’s Joe Nguyen will be speaking at the Travel Distribution Summit Asia in Singapore on April 29. For more details, please visit: http://www.comscore.com/Press_Events/Events_Webinars/Event#Travel

About comScore

comScore, Inc. (NASDAQ: SCOR) is a global leader in measuring the digital world and preferred source of digital marketing intelligence. For more information, please visit www.comscore.com/companyinfo.

Contact:
Sarah Radwanick
Senior Analyst
comScore, Inc.

press@comscore.com