Recently I mentioned having seen a chart that I wanted to share, but was waiting for the OK as it was in a slide deck where every page was marked internal. Well I got the go-ahead, so here it is. 

The key takeaway here is how in all markets listed, OTA’s have grown volume whilst the industry was going through very tough times. The chart shows air volume, and only GDS segments, so it is not a complete picture of either the market or the OTA business, but I thought it was interesting nonetheless. I’m not totally sure why Asia Pacific looks low in absolute terms, but don’t pay too much attention to the unlabelled vertical axis and instead focus on the percentages.

I was talking to someone earlier today about the rapid growth of  despegar.com; apparently they dominate the Latin American OTA space and are growing at breakneck speed. Earlier in the week someone was talking to me about a newer US OTA that was doing well but whose name I have forgotten, and I also had a senior airline exec asking me last week about strategies for competing more effectively with OTAs. To be honest, I haven’t watched this sector as closely as I could have over the past couple of years, but with my move to the US for work, this will definitely be changing.  

The other thing I had mentioned that I was thinking of sharing but have now decided not to was from a report commissioned by Amadeus called Show Me the Value: European Online Travel Agencies Activity Based Costing Analysis. It is from December 2009 and a similar version is currently being prepared with US offline travel agencies. If the topic is of interest to you and you are an Amadeus customer, then do ask your account manager to track down a copy and to share whatever can be shared as it is a very interesting read with a lot of financial analysis and comparisons relevant to the OTA market.

Update: Click here for an improved version of the same chart