In April 2001, 6.19% of French Internet users visited an airline company Web site, 4.26% visited a hotel site, 2.75% visited a car rental site and 25.5% visited a TO or an online Travel agency

eBookers reinforces its position and maintains its financial targets

68% of American companies would already be affected by the economic slowdown

The figures are taken from a behavioural panel of French users who access the Internet both from work and from home, that belongs to BVA TFC Research

Airline companies:

The average time when Internet users visited airline company Web sites was 2.48 P.M. and 64.5% of the visits from these same Internet users took place between 8.00 A.M. and 7.00 P.M, which mainly corresponds to working hours.

If, within a whole day of surf, an airline company Web site arrives in 40th position in a user's surf session, then airline company Web sites get a rank session of 3.74 which means that airline company Web sites are the third and fourth sites visited by users during a surf session that includes these sites.

The first six airline company Web sites for April 2001 were as follow (according to our visitor coverage rate):

• AirFrance.fr
• Air-Liberté.fr
• AOM.fr
• KLM.com
• Buzzaway.com
• Ryanair.com

Online hotels:

The average time when Internet users visited online hotel sites was 3.36 P.M. and 60.05% of the visits from these same users took place between 8.00 A.M and 7.00 P.M.

Please note that a site such as gites-de-France.fr managed to get a visitor coverage rate of 1.01%. This rate corresponds to the number of people who visited the site Gites-de-France.fr compared to the total number of visitors on all French Internet sites.

This site also proves different from the other Web sites as visitors spent an average of 7 minutes and 39 seconds on it, which happens to be twice as much as the average time spent on sites that belong to this sector.

TO online Agencies:

What strikes us for April is the very good result obtained by Promovacances.com that gets an Internet visitor coverage rate of 7.5%. This rate corresponds to the number of visitors who visited Promovacances Web site compared to the total number of French Internet users.

Please also note that as far as customer loyalty is concerned, 19.8% of these users only visited two different sites of TO and online travel agencies in April 2001.

Tourist guides and travel communities:

Filfog remained first of this category in April 2001 with a visitor coverage rate of 6.81%. This rate corresponds to the number of consumers who visited Filfog.com compared to the total number of French Internet users.

Source: BVA TFC Research

After the encouraging results announced by Travelocity and Expedia, eBookers.com announced consolidated sales of $48.7 million for the first quarter of 2001, which proves 96% higher than its consolidated sales for the first quarter of 2000.

Its gross profit amounts to $6.3 million (which proves 110% higher than its gross profit for the first quarter of 2000), which proves a bigger increase than its turnover. Such increase can also be seen in the company's gross margin that goes from 12.2% to 13% in just one year.

Even though its final result remains negative, eBookers expects its cash flow to become positive by the end of 2001 or the beginning of 2002.

In any case, the company seems well able to reach such target thanks to a cash balance that was $43.8 million at 31st March, 2001.

These encouraging results are not only the result of an average gross transaction that proves rather high ($786) but also to the fact that the company managed to reduce its general expenses and operating charges in a drastic way.

This is how eBookers managed to reduce its G&A expenditure, as proportion of reported sales, from 15.5% in the last quarter of 2000 to 9.8% in the first quarter of 2001.

Source: eBookers

A survey of 200 companies, carried out by the NBTA (National Business Travel Association) at the end of April 2001, reveals that 68% of these 200 companies have already taken steps to reduce the number of business travels of their employees.

What's more, 51% of the respondents indicated that their travel costs have increased more than 6-9% since January 2001. Among them, 86% think that airfares have increased between 10-15% since this same month of January.

What these companies also question is the necessity of business travel itself.

According to the comments collected by NBTA, companies now measure travel activities in terms of the impact it has (or does not have) on their financial performances. If such impact fails to show, the business travel is canceled.

What's more , 59% of the respondents are presently looking for the best value for money they can possibly find and no longer hesitate to look for new hotels or airline companies that might be able to offer better prices.

This survey seems to unveil quite a big change in the way companies think . Some companies no longer hesitate to turn themselves into "bargain hunters".

Let me remind you that the NBTA represents over 2,000 corporate travel managers, which represents more than $130 billion of expenditures within the business travel industry.

Source: NBTA