BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE:   Business Week ebiz
DATA MINE Sept. 13, 1999 Surprise! The Winner is Yahoo! Forrester Research estimates that the online travel industry will soar to $29 billion in leisure bookings from $3.1 billion in 1998. To determine which sites are likely to be leaders in the world of Net travel, the Cambridge (Mass.) research shop put together a ranking of top Web players. The results will surprise you: The top travel site isn't even a travel site -- it's uberportal Yahoo!. Why? Because a key factor in the results is "reach," or the percentage of people planning a trip who visited the site in the past year to research travel. Now the trick, as Forrester points out, is for Yahoo! and other portals to start converting those lookers into ticket buyers. Top Travel Sites Yahoo! 13.6 Travelocity 11.9 Expedia 9.4 Southwest 8.9 Excite 7.9 AOL 7.8 Netscape 7.7 American 6.5 Delta 6.5 Infoseek 6.3 DATA: Forrester Research Inc. _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					MORE NUGGETS Which Java Rocks The most popular programs used to create Java applications are made by Microsoft The Online Mortgage Business Is Set to Boom In 1998, online mortgage brokers originated loans worth $4.1 billion, a huge sum for an infant industry The Last Mile Many still cite privacy concerns as a key reason for not shopping online The Mother Lode Collected nuggets from Data Mine