Travel Leads B2C Ecommerce Sales in Australia

Travel is one of the top online purchase categories among consumers in Australia, reports eMarketer. Nearly 40% of consumers in the country purchased travel online in the 12 months preceding September 2012, according to Hewlett-Packard and RFi’s report, “Australian Payments Research: Consumer Trends and Behavior.”

Smaller items like clothing and jewelry, music and books, and electrical items were purchased by a higher percentage of online buyers in the country, but of the top five purchase categories, only clothing/jewelry and travel saw a year-over-year increase.

Because travel products are typically expensive purchase items, their popularity among Australia’s online consumers led the category to become the highest-grossing ecommerce segment in the 12 months ending in June 2012. Totaling AUD5.9 billion ($6.08 billion), online travel sales accounted for more than one-quarter of all Australian B2C ecommerce sales during that period, according to June data from Roy Morgan Research.

Consumers in Australia are already comfortable booking online, and the market is beginning to mature.

According to PhoCusWright, 39% of all travel sales in Australia and New Zealand occurred online in 2012. However, there’s still room to grow. eMarketer estimated in July a 7.4% compound annual growth rate for online travel sales in the country between 2011 and 2016.

Source:eMarketer