In the U.S., travelers are price conscious and tend to be more satisfied with online travel sites that offer what is looked at as the best price online. A new report on ranking for independent travel sites was completed by J.D. Power and Associates and released on Friday.
The report ranks the travel sites with more than 2,000 consumers being surveyed that purchased an airline ticket, hotel room, rental car or vacation plan on one of the third party sites within the past 12 months.
A number of factors have affected the overall satisfaction of travelers, but over 75% of consumers responded that price is the primary reason they purchased the product they purchased. Researchers said it was clear than prices impacted the overall experience of consumers when making purchases for vacation or other types of travel.
Participants in the survey rated Priceline.com, Booking.com, Orbitz.com, Hotels.com and Hotwire.com as all being above average travel sites. The same groups of participants rated Travel.Yahoo.com, CheapTickets.com, CheapOair.com, Travelocity.com and Expedia.com as all being below average travel sites.
Booking.com, one of the highest ranked sites for travel bookings online is not as well known by Americans as it is by Europeans. However, it is the world’s largest booking site online for hotels as per number of room nights sold.
In the survey, data was broken down into the types of bookings like flights, hotel rooms, rental cars and vacation packages. In addition, the purchasers’ age was recorded.
The age group that was most satisfied was between the ages of 45 and 54 and the group that was least satisfied was the group of people 55 and older.
