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The Indispensable Travel Industry Read Feature Highlight The heartbeat of South-east Asia's nightlife Vol. 2 Issue 15 | 19 April 2011 | www.travelweeklyweb.com | Published by Travel & Meetings Group, Ten Alps Communications Asia Pte Ltd Editor's Pick Mövenpick Hotels & Resorts, Singapore News Low-cost airlines: The changing demographics of travel Tiger Airways is seeing signifi cant growth. Across the globe, consumers continue to turn to the web for their travel needs. From trip research, price comparison shopping and booking, consumers are fi nding the convenience of the web vital to their personal and business travel. As we look across markets, with a focus on Asia Pacifi c in particular, we are fi nding various demographic trends driving growth across the online travel industry. Understanding these trends is important for suppliers and OTAs alike in order to build a strong online presence and increase their share of consumers' travel wallets. The following report provides an overview of key trends in the global online travel industry, with a focus on the Asia Pacifi c region. It also provides an analysis of the low-cost airline market and how consumer demographic trends are Fairmont revs up for F1 Page 6 internet users in Singapore visited a travel site during the month of February. Among travel subcategories, influencing these growing online brands. Globally, 446-million unique visitors age 15+ visited a travel site from a work or home computer in February 2011. This represents one -thi rd of the wor ldwide internet audience and is an 18 per cent increase in visitors compared to February 2011. The majority of visitors to travel sites come from Europe or North America; 63 per cent come from these two regions, though they only represent 42 per cent of the global internet population, but only represented 26 per cent of visitors to online travel destinations. Countries with the highest rates of travel site visitation are primarily in Europe and North America. The United Kingdom tops the list , with two-thirds of its online population visiting travel sites in February. A notable exception is Singapore, a small city- state where practically any flight is bound to be for an international destination. More than half of travel information is the most popular, with 208-million global visitors. Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are also very popular, with a combined 181-million unique visitors in February 2011. Hotels/ resorts sites received 119-million worldwide visitors during February, while airlines reached 114-million visitors. Globally, visitors to travel sites generally skew to an older audience. Compared to the average distribution of worldwide internet users, travel visitors are more likely to be over the age of 45. Demographic distribution varies considerably by region, however – travel site visitors in Asia Pacifi c and Latin America are much younger. Page 2