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Travel sites gain popularity in Ireland
20-12-2000
by Aoidin Scully
A new survey shows that travel is the most-purchased service for Irish shoppers on-line, but on-line grocery buying makes a poor showing.
The new survey from Amarach Consulting. Over four in 10 e-commerce active Internet users have purchased on-line travel services in the last three months, the study found.
"One of the biggest successes has been Ryanair.com and that has had a huge impact on the marketplace. On-line propositions have to be strong, and this is an extremely strong proposition from a customer perspective," said Michael McLoughlin, Amarach's Director of eServices.
He added that Ryanair's policy has a knock-on effect, in encouraging people to use the Internet.
"Travel services are likely to account for a growing proportion of Ireland's business to consumer e-commerce market. The challenge for those seeking to do business on the Internet is no different to that facing offline businesses. They have to create winning customer propositions which offer tangible and real benefit to the consumer. These could be based on factors such as choice, value, price or convenience," said McLoughlin.
Seventy percent of Internet users agreed that in the future they will use the Internet to book a holiday -- over a third stressed this strongly. Interest in booking a holiday on-line was highest amongst 25-34 year olds, and those with home Internet access.
The latest findings will be good news for the likes of Farenet.ie, Travelmad, and Clickandgonow.com, who have all established on-line travel services aimed at Irish consumers.
Donegal-based Travelmad is looking for funding of IEP16 million and is considering flotation on the AIM stock exchange and the German Neuer Markt in the latter half of 2001.
Farenet.ie, launched in September 1999, admits that the competition it faces will in time become fierce as the number of UK/US based traveller companies target Ireland as an important market. While Clickandgonow.com, which offers an on-line hotel reservations service for business and leisure travellers, processes 100,000 bookings per month for rooms in over 50,000 hotels.
The survey also found that only one in five Internet users will be buying groceries on-line in the future. Amarach said this low figure is disappointing for those involved in recent on-line initiatives such as Buy4Now.ie and Tesco.ie
Growth in the number of Irish adults using the Internet continues. Twenty-eight percent of Irish adults say they use the Internet -- equivalent to 784,000 people. Home remains the dominant access point with six in 10 Internet users logging on from home.
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