Fitch Ratings-New York-18 November 2015: Fitch Ratings has published a Dashboard covering the U.S. online travel agency (OTA) market.
Fitch expects industry-wide gross bookings trends to increase at a low-to-mid teens rate during 2016 due to penetration of mobile and online bookings, supplemented by additional strategic acquisitions in underserved markets. Ongoing pricing pressure in the OTA market combined with increasing competition with direct sales channels will weigh on future profitability.
Operators are currently benefitting from the secular shift toward use of OTAs. However, there is also increasing competition from non-traditional online travel businesses including TripAdvisor & Google, as well as the potential for non-traditional suppliers to evolve into significant competitors in the future.
The published Dashboard is meant to serve as a quick reference for the OTA markets. The dashboard provides investors with Fitch's perspective on key topics, along with charts of key drivers.
