Priceline Group Gaining Ground in Asia Pacific

Priceline Group's bet on the Asia Pacific hotel opportunity is paying off. According to a new Phocuswright Asia Pacific and Global Editionreport, the company's Agoda brand is the most popular online travel agency (OTA) in five of nine countries studied and the only OTA to hold the top spot in multiple Asia Pacific (APAC) markets.

In 4Q12, Agoda ranked as the most-trafficked OTA in Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, the Philippines and South Korea. Along with Booking.com – Priceline's other hotel play – Agoda has also been rapidly expanding its footprint in Australia. Australian traffic to the two sites in aggregate grew 80% year-over-year in 4Q12, paving the way for Priceline to steal the top spot in yet another APAC market.

"With a few notable exceptions, the most popular OTAs in Asia Pacific are lodging-focused," said Chetan Kapoor, research analyst at Phocuswright. "Standalone and unbranded hotels are prevalent across APAC, and travelers are turning to intermediaries to get an aggregate view of their lodging options."

While Agoda dominated the OTA category in most markets, the top spot in APAC's two largest online travel markets went to air-centric, homegrown OTAs: Ctrip and MakeMyTrip garnered the most traffic to the OTA category in China and India, respectively.

Phocuswright's Pan-Asia Pacific Online Travel Traffic Trends Report, created in partnership with comScore, measures and analyzes web traffic within the travel category across nine APAC markets – Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Malaysia, the Philippines, South Korea and Thailand. The report analyzes key metrics to illuminate sector-specific trends and track travel subcategories within the APAC online travel market.

Topics include:

• Travel category traffic by market (4Q12 vs. 4Q11)
• Internet user demographics by market
• The varying role of search engines and social media
• OTA versus supplier traffic and competitive dynamics
• Top APAC websites within the OTA, hotel and airline categories, with comparisons by market
• Analysis of key transactional websites in Australia, China and Japan

Purchase Phocuswright's Pan-Asia Pacific Online Travel Traffic Trends Report to understand online travel traffic growth trends and competitive dynamics across APAC's key markets.