Online business class fails to take off

Consumer travelers love their dot-coms, though...

By Julian Goldsmith, 14 August 2001 09:30

NEWS Online booking of business class travel will fail to mirror the runaway success experienced by consumer sales of economy tickets. According to a report from internet analysts, Jupiter Media Metrix, US corporate spending on online bookings in 2005 will amount to $25bn, a massive reduction on its prediction of $33bn a year ago. The results are in strong contrast to the consumer travel sector, which is moving to online bookings in huge numbers. Cheap Tickets, which announced it was concentrating on online sales so that it could drop its bricks-and-mortar operation, was bought yesterday by Avis car rental parent Cendant, for $425m. In the last 30 days, Expedia and Priceline have both turned in positive quarterly results, and ebookers reduced its losses.

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