Luxury travel flying high online

There’s an interesting article on adotas.com about how much the internet is used for booking luxury travel online.   Here it is:

A study released Wednesday by Yahoo! Search Marketing found that 87 percent of consumers who go on high end vacations use the Internet to some capacity in making their travel arrangements. Yahoo! surveyed 401 people who had stayed at a luxury hotel at least twice in the past two years, and found in their pool consumers with an average income of $70,000, and generally between the ages of 40 and 64. The study found that 61 percent of respondents used the Internet to purchase their most recent vacation. Yahoo! broke down the luxury travelers by which tools they used to make their decisions: 57 percent used general search engines, 54 percent consulted online travel agencies, 44 percent went to online travel suppliers, while 10 percent used chatboards and blogs. Almost half, 49 percent, of respondents ended up purchasing their tickets from an online travel agency. In related news this week, Cendant—the operator of popular online travel agencies Orbitz and CheapTickets.com—announced it will increase online ad spending by 30-40 percent in the second quarter of this year. The company said it is responding to a recent increase in domestic consumer bookings by 18-22 percent.