Over 50's online travel boom!!
Sit back with a hot cuppa and let your fingers do the walking! That was once the slogan for the white and yellow pages, these days it's for the internet. More and more people are using the internet and once you get the hang of it it's easy to see why. What's also interesting is that it is the over 50- age bracket that seem to have the most faith in this new technology. The latest research reveals well over three quarters of Internet users aged over 50 have visited a travel site in the last year.
The Nielsen//Net Ratings findings show that 1.5 million in this age bracket visited the secure pages of travel websites to book travel.
The key points to come from the research are:
- 86% of all surfers aged over 50 have visited a travel site in the last year. 1.5 million of them visited the secure pages of a travel website to make a booking in September 2005.
- The most popular travel site with the over 50's is Expedia - ahead of second placed Lastminute.com with almost 900,000 visitors during Summer.
- Over half (54%) of online users visit a travel site; (In the UK that's over 14 million people every month - a growth of 20% in that last year alone).
- Surfers spend on average 40 minutes a month viewing more than 70 pages of content on a variety of travel sites, from airlines to cruise lines, hotels to travel agents.
- Overall, pure online travel sites are more popular with the over 50's than the traditional high street bands - www.expedia.com and www.lastminute.com.
- The over 50's are ‘looking & booking’ online more than their younger counterparts - accessing the secured section of travel websites to make bookings much more regularly.
- The research firm described the lucrative over 50's age group as a ‘wide and varied audience hungry for travel experiences and adept at using the internet to get the best details - a point that all sectors of the web should sit up and take notice of.
Nielsen/NetRatings internet analyst said: “The figures for the online travel sector continue to impress but what screams out is the staggering percentage of over 50's who go online for travel. This not only has far-reaching implications for the internet as a whole but confirms beyond doubt that the web is not just a young person's tool.”
Cruise Lines are particularly popular with this age group; being twice as likely to be visited by those aged 50+ (nearly half of visits to cruise lines sites are over 50). Sites in the cruise line category overall, have more than doubled the number of visitors going to secured parts of the site over the last year.
According to the analyst, “The way that the 50+ age group has embraced the online travel sector contains valuable lessons for all sectors looking to increase their online customers - for example, looking closely at what cruise line companies are doing that has resulted in the huge increased numbers of visitors going to secure pages.
“The behaviour of this age group is an extremely vibrant example of how the internet can be used to improve people's lives and experiences. It's worth pointing out, it's not simply a case that they're sticking with offline brands they've trusted over the years - only Thomson makes it into the Top Five travel sties, all the other four are purely online brands.
“If the older generation can utilise the web to such an extent this bodes increasingly well for the web over the next few years. It is well known that this age group in particular are a huge audience for holidays and travel and the development of the internet has enriched the lives of those over 50, as well as those taking early retirement and releasing capital from their homes to succumb to the desire to travel the world.
The Internet gives them the opportunity to research destinations, create itineraries, compare prices and book trips in real time. The ability to have more control over the total cost of a package also means that for those with the travel bug it's now possible to plan several trips a year from the comfort of your PC.”