Destination cyberspace: Australia’s most popular travel and tourism websites

The rise of digital technology has transformed the travel and tourism industry to the point where cyberspace is practically a destination in its own right, complete with must-see attractions such as travel blogs, booking aggregator sites, user-review sites, the online offerings of airlines and traditional bricks-and-mortar travel agents, and more. The latest findings from Roy Morgan Research reveal which travel websites are most popular with Australians 14+.

In the 12 months to March 2016, 13.7% of the population (or 2.7 million people) visited the Qantas website in an average four weeks, making it Australia’s most visited travel website—comfortably ahead of Booking.com and Jetstar’s website, each of which attracts 9.7% of the population (1.9 million people) per four weeks.

Rounding out the top five are Virgin Australia’s website (9.6%) and Tripadvisor (8.8%).

Australia’s top 15 travel/tourism websites by average four-weekly visitation

Besides the airlines and the Flight Centre website, the Top 15 travel websites are dominated by online-only businesses: mainly booking sites, but also News Corp-owned news.com.au/travel (5.3%) and Fairfax-owned Traveller.com.au (3.8%).

Surprisingly, some of the sites in the Top 15 have seen a decline in visitation since 2014, most notably Qantas (down from 15.2%), Virgin (down from 10.6%) and wotif.com (down from 7.5%). User-review site Trip Advisor is the most improved by far, increasing its average four-weekly visitation by almost 45% (from 6.1% to 8.8%), while Booking.com inched up from 9.0% to 9.7%.