Keeping Aware of Top US travel sites is important to effectively using OTAs

All change in hotel list - Top US travel sites, January 7 2012

January 10, 2012
 market leader TripAdvisor remained in its existing position last week in the top ten leading travel websites in the US as the remaining nine sites swapped places.

The previous week's second and third places, held by Marriott and Hotels.com respectively, switched positions, while Carnival Cruise Lines soared to fourth spot from ninth and Vacation Rentals by Owner jumped from eighth to fifth.



Most popular travel websites in the US for the week ending January 7 2012:

Agency

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Expedia	www.expedia.com	12.72%	1
2	priceline.com	www.priceline.com	8.98%	2
3	Orbitz	www.orbitz.com	7.16%	3
4	Travelocity	www.travelocity.com	6.39%	5
5	Yahoo! Travel	travel.yahoo.com	6.26%	8
6	CheapOair	www.cheapoair.com	5.86%	6
7	Kayak	www.kayak.com	5.26%	4
8	Hotwire	www.hotwire.com	4.74%	7
9	Cheap Tickets	www.cheaptickets.com	2.81%	10
10	bookingbuddy	www.bookingbuddy.com	2.44%	-

Destinations and Accommodation

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	TripAdvisor	www.tripadvisor.com	8.38%	1
2	Marriott International	www.marriott.com	2.74%	3
3	Hotels.com	www.hotels.com	2.65%	2
4	Carnival Cruise Lines	www.carnival.com	2.23%	9
5	Vacation Rentals by Owner	www.vrbo.com	2.17%	8
6	Hilton Hotels Online	www.hilton.com	2.09%	5
7	InterContinental Hotels Group	www.ichotelsgroup.com	2.00%	4
8	Booking.com	www.booking.com	1.87%	7
9	Walt Disney World	disneyworld.disney.go.com	1.65%	10
10	Harrah's Casino Hotels	www.harrahs.com	1.35%	-

Airlines

Rank	Website	Domain	Percentage of Visits	Previous Position
1	Southwest Airlines	www.southwest.com	22.03%	1
2	Delta Air Lines	www.delta.com	12.20%	2
3	American Airlines	www.aa.com	9.45%	3
4	JetBlue Airways	www.jetblue.com	8.50%	4
5	Continental Airlines	www.continental.com	6.56%	5
6	United Airlines	www.united.com	5.52%	7
7	US Airways	www.usairways.com	5.12%	6
8	AirTran Airways	www.airtran.com	4.69%	8
9	Allegiant Air	www.allegiantair.com	3.60%	9
10	Spirit Airlines	www.spiritair.com	3.35%	10

Travel search terms

Rank	Search Term	Percentage of Clicks	Percentage Paid	Percentage Organic	Previous Position
1	mapquest	3.97%	0.08%	99.92%	1
2	google maps	1.47%	0.68%	99.32%	2
3	southwest airlines	1.42%	40.72%	59.28%	3
4	expedia	0.80%	57.36%	42.64%	5
5	maps	0.74%	0.68%	99.32%	4
6	map quest	0.69%	0.00%	100.00%	6
7	travelocity	0.69%	57.48%	42.52%	7
8	continental airlines	0.59%	8.86%	91.14%	9
9	american airlines	0.57%	2.67%	97.33%	10
10	google earth	0.51%	17.13%	82.87%	8

NB: Data couresy of Experian Hitwise