[Berlin, GERMANY] Internet users in Germany, Great Britain, France and
Sweden remain loyal to national providers of travel information on the net.
This was the result of the most recent study in May by MMXI Europe.
Since the beginning of this year, the Deutschebahn.de, British-Airways.com, Nouvelles-Frontieres.fr and ving.se have been in first place in the list of top
European travel sites. The British have only just begun to investigate the
possibility of booking train journeys online. In May, two train sites were in
the British Top 5 for the first time: TheTrainline.com and Railtrack.co.uk.
Pure Internet companies are also favored by euro travelers. The travel
site lastminute.com
has been at first place in the top British travel sites for months. Arielle
Dinard, manager of MMXI Europe commented: “With the increasing maturity of
the Internet, traditional suppliers of travel information are beginning to
use the net in order to accentuate and strengthen their own brands. Although
there are sometimes strong differences to be measured between countries in
utilization behavior, established brands seem to generally have an easier
time online. This of course presupposes that they are able to offer
valuable information for their target group.”
Internet users in the individual countries differ not only in respect of
location. There are also gender specific differences in utilization
practices. For example, over three quarters of the visitors of the British
rail sites TheTrainline.com and Railtrack.co.uk are male, while only around
60 percent of the users of Deutschebahn.de are men. In addition, more than
half of all visitors of lastminute.com in Great Britain are men, in France
the figure lies at a mere 37 percent.
