Travel sites attracted an additional 1m users in the UK between November and April, but the majority of customers actually still find it cheaper and faster to make travel purchases offline.
Research from analyst house Jupiter MMXI ranked Lastminute, Easyjet and Expedia.co.uk the most popular sites, and total UK online travel sales for this year are expected to reach $806m (£580m). Last year the online travel market did $420m in business, and Jupiter expects the sites will reach a $2.7bn turnover by 2005.
According to analyst Dan Stevenson, those figures belie the fact that most sites thus far have failed to transfer increased visits to actual sales, and that package holidays have not proved a popular online sale.
"People are researching travel buys online but buying offline, particularly for high price items," he said.
Part of the reticence is due to general online purchase problems faced by all retailers, such as security concerns or greater confidence in dealing offline. But Mr Stevenson said an important part of the problem is the complexity of booking certain types of tickets.
"For long haul or round the world tickets, online is not the place to buy them because you probably don't get the best price available. But for simple transactions, such as European tickets, you'll get the same price online as if you phone up," he said.
Mr Stevenson also said that the speed of some sites deterred purchases. He pointed to Ebookers.com, a popular site that works hand in hand with its offline component, Flightbookers. Although users are likely to get the same price both online and off, it is still faster in most cases to phone up and book, he said.
The list of the top ten UK travel sites included two airlines, notably Easyjet who now claim to do 90% of sales online.
The good news for online travel retailers is that during peak periods of January, February and July, travel sites outperformed the traditionally more popular online categories of news, information and retail.
Top ten travel sites in the UK, April 2001 (Jupiter MMXI):
