Time for a Smile

According to the Chase United Mileage Plus Visa Card Holiday Travel Survey, “30% of respondents, mostly women, would most like to gab with Oprah during a cross-country flight. The second most desirable talk show seatmate is Jay Leno (14%), who was more popular with male travelers. When it comes to talking business, most respondents would like to swap boardroom advice with Bill Gates (17%), followed by Martha Stewart, Alan Greenspan and Richard Branson (all 12%). Among college-age respondents, 18-24 years old, 40% wanted a seat next to Bill Gates. Travelers nearing retirement, ages 55-64 years old, would prefer to share an armrest with Warren Buffett.  […] Giving new meaning to "flying the friendly skies," 24% of holiday travelers say they consider a flight an opportunity to meet a future significant other. This is truer for younger travelers, with more than one in five travelers viewing a flight as chance to make a love connection.”

Travel Trends

Business travel increases: A recent Travel Industry Association of America survey reported that “Americans will take 144 million business trips by the end of this year, 4% more than in 2003 […]  and ”business travel will increase 3.6 percent to 149 million trips in 2005.”

Online travel industry will reach $91 billion by 2009: New research by JupiterResearch “finds that the U.S. online travel market has grown at a fast pace over the last year, totaling $54 billion in 2004, or 23% of travel purchased. The online market is projected to grow to $91 billion in 2009, or 33% of travel purchased. [..] In this highly price-sensitive industry, search engines are becoming a critical part of the marketing mix: more consumers are prompted to visit travel sites as a result of a search than through any other media source. Findings of this JupiterResearch forecast include: in 2004 airline tickets remain the largest online leisure travel revenue category, representing $23.3 billion in revenue; over $11.6 billion in hotel revenue was booked by consumers in 2004.

Who’s online? According to comScore data, “62 million unique visitors clicked on travel sites in October 2004, or roughly 40% of the U.S. online population of 150 million users. An increasingly evident pattern in that traffic is the growing popularity of travel-specific search engines.”

Rapid spread of Wi-Fi:  According to a recent research quoted in the Seattle Times, “the number of Wi-Fi hotspot users worldwide is expected to grow from 9.3 million last year to 30 million in 2004. The number of Wi-Fi hotspots has grown from a few hundred locations worldwide in 2000 to 40,000 in 2003. It is also predicted that, in the very near future, more than 50 percent of laptops used by professional users will have built-in Wi-Fi by year's end.”

“Intel, the world's largest producer of microchips, announced that it expects 90% of all laptops shipped this year will contain its Centrino mobile wireless technology, and Wi-Fi is being seen as another core computing feature, rather than an accessory. When customers demanded wireless access in hotels, the hotels had to comply.”

According to Hewlett-Packard:

• Number of frequent Wi-Fi users in North America in 2003: 4.2 million
• Expected number of Wi-Fi users in North America in 2007: 31 million
• Estimated number of cell phone users in North America in 2003: 200 million
• Number of commercial hot-spots in US in 2003: 9,700
• Expected number of commercial hot spots by 2006: 50,000
• Expected number of US users paying to access Wi-Fi hot spots by 2006: 5.5 million
• New wireless hardware sales in 2002: $1 billion

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