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Online shoppers' thoughts are turning to spring and summer vacation plans, and they are using the Web to turn those thoughts into reality. According to Internet measurement firm Nielsen//NetRatings, traffic to travel Web sites grew 12 percent to 51.2 million visitors in March, up from 45.9 million in February.
NetRatings reported that about 43 percent of all Web surfers visited a travel site in March either at work or at home, compared with 39 percent in February.
Patrick Thomas, senior Internet analyst at NetRatings, said that even a fee increase -- such as the US$10 Travelocity began charging users who booked United Airlines flights on its site in order to compensate for canceled airline commissions -- did not stop online shoppers from booking and researching trips online.
"Thus far we haven't seen a huge flock of people bypassing travel sites to go to airline sites," NetRatings analyst Lisa Strand told the E-Commerce Times, adding that online consumers seem to see value in both airline and third-party sites. Of the top 10 travel Web properties in March, according to NetRatings, seven were third-party sites and three were airline sites.
Expedia Tops List
According to NetRatings, Expedia (Nasdaq: EXPE) was the most popular travel site, with its number of unique visitors increasing 18 percent to 11.6 million in March. Travelocity took the number two spot with 10.2 million unique visitors, up 24 percent over February.
Airline-owned Orbitz took third place, followed by Southwest Airlines (NYSE: LUV), Trip Networks' Cheap Tickets, American Airlines, Yahoo! (Nasdaq: YHOO) Travel, Delta Air Lines, Priceline (Nasdaq: PCLN) and AOL Travel.
Most Improved
Cheap Tickets saw the biggest surge in customer 
use
during the month, with unique visitors reaching 4.4
million, up 51 percent over February's visitor count.
Yahoo! Travel's March traffic -- just under 4.2 million -- was 33 percent higher than its February numbers. American, Southwest, Priceline, Orbitz and Delta also saw double-digit gains.
Hot Deals
To capitalize on summer travel planning, some sites
are offering special fares and packages for spring and
summer travel. In fact, travel sites increasingly have
focused on offering travel products like cruises and
vacation packages because those sales are
more lucrative than airline ticket sales .
Travelocity, for instance, purchased Site59.com, a popular site for finding last-minute travel deals, in an effort to lessen its dependence on commissions.
The company paid $43 million for the site, which will allow it to better control its margins because the site itself, not the travel supplier, sets the price consumers will pay.
More Time Online
NetRatings also found that Web users went online more frequently in March. The average number of sessions either at home or at work was 36, up from 33 in February.
More people went online in March -- 120 million, up from 118.8 million in February -- and those who went online spent more time connected as well.
According to NetRatings, the average user spent 19 hours and 50
minutes online in March, up from 18 hours and 44 minutes in
February.
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