We are reporting live on Day 2 of WIT 2015, fresh after Lorraine Sileo’s coffee chat with WIT’s founder, Yeoh Siew Hoon. Lorraine who is the SVP, Research at Phocuswright shared opinions and key findings from their recent study on the Asian Travel Industry:
- Major hospitality brands are the ones that are least reliant on OTAs. The focus for them is to drive direct bookings. For instance, Marriott’s recent social media campaign was around creating awareness on making direct hotel bookings.
- OTAs represent 20% or less of supplier distributions for most hotel chains globally. However in APAC, trends are completely different as OTAs are driving growth streak in APAC towering over supplier websites and online travel market.
Lorraine Sileo during the session at WIT Bootcamp
- OTAs dominate hotel bookings in APAC accounting for about 69% bookings in 2014. In emerging markets such as India, OTAs account for 60% bookings.
- India & ANZ will be the most dominant markets in-terms of Online Travel Penetration with about 44% projected penetration by 2017.
- Global OTAs account for only 19% share in Asia Pacific with local OTAs taking the major pie at 81%.
- 7 out of 10 hotel bookings in ASIA are going through OTA, on the other hand 3 out of 10 are for airlines.
- No non-specific e-commerce giant has been able to succeed in Travel. (Recent reference: Amazon shutting down their travel vertical).
- China will lead Asia on Mobile travel in gross bookings with projected sales of over 40 Billion USD by 2017 followed by Japan & India.
