Smell of change was in the air, but summer holiday season promises further sensational developments: travel and tourism sector has become the number one in e-commerce market. The tourism sector share in the Internet market, has become the most important, exceeding 50% of unique users.

Airlines, shipping companies and car hire, have invested considerable resources on the web, as did the tour operators and travel agents linked to these ones. The leading sectors of e-commerce tourism are the flight tickets, which boasts 60% of the total share, and this is mainly due to the growth of web surfer interest for cheap flights, but also for travel by train: online hotel bookings is however a constantly growing sector. Hotel managers have encouraged the trend to reduce the costs of intermediation: 90% of accommodation activities has its own website. In this scenery, intermediaries are obliged to offer additional services.

In addition to specialized portals, emerging realities are meta-search engines, which allows a comparison of hotel rates. Meta search sites like http://prontohotel.com manage about 15% of the tourist market, and they are expected to be constantly growing because meta search engine does not take commissions, but allow conspicuous time a money savings.

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