Italy is Europe’s fifth largest travel market and one of the world’s largest travel spenders. Due to its strong preference for traditional offline bookings, Italy lags behind in online travel penetration. PhoCusWright’s Italian Online Travel Overview Fourth Edition provides an in-depth look at the current (2006-2007) and future (2008-2010) online travel trends as well as detailed insight into the European online travel market as a whole.
Highlights include:
- Suppliers
- Airlines (traditional airline segment in a state of financial crisis while LCC’s dominate the online travel market)
- Hotels (hold a strikingly large share of the total online market)
- Rail (the fastest-growing Italian segment)
- Car Rental (despite past modest growth, strong gains are foreseen for this segment)
- Tour Operators (have not made efforts to promote the Internet as a direct sales channel thus far)
- Online Travel Agencies (enjoying a very strong market position)
