Orbitz and Travelocity have announced that they will follow Expedia in eliminating fees for booking flights over the Internet. A few years ago we noticed that Travel Agencies see one of the highest levels of comparison shopping, measured by clickstream traffic.
Looking at upstream visits to Travel Agencies, we see that 30% come from other Travel Agencies (week to 30 May 2009). Travel Agencies receive more upstream visits from other Travel Agencies than from Search Engines.

To give you a benchmark against which to compare this, consider the Shopping & Classifieds Appliances & Electronics category which received 7% of upstream visits from websites in the same category last week and 35% from Search Engines. Similarly, Insurance websites received 11.38% of upstream visits from other Insurance websites last week compared to 23.08% from Search Engines.
Insurance and Appliances and Electronics are highly competitive categories but we still see a much higher level of competitive traffic moving within the Travel Agencies category.
It is therefore not surprising that Travelocity and Orbitz followed Expedia’s lead to cut the booking fee. It is also perhaps unsurprising that Expedia made the move in the first place as consumers are price comparing across not just Travel Agencies but also airline, hotel and car rental websites as well. Last week, 7% of downstream visits from Travel Agencies went to Commercial Airlines websites and 10% went to Destination and Accommodations websites.
Clickstream data can provide excellent insight into the degree to which consumers are comparison shopping in a given category. It can also identify new competitive threats by showing the websites consumers visit before and after your site – where they may be comparing your offers.