SEARCHES FOR "CRUISE REVIEWS" SKYROCKET 219 PERCENT

People Ages 55 and Over Most Likely to Visit Cruise Sites

NEW YORK, April 18, 2006 – As the travel season begins to heat up, many Americans interested in taking cruises are utilizing the Internet for reviews of cruise vacations. According to Hitwise, the world’s leading online competitive intelligence service, the share of US Internet searches for ‘cruise reviews’ was up 219 percent for week ending April 15, 2006 versus two weeks prior (week ending April 1, 2006).

During that same time period the share of searches for ‘discount cruises’ was up 143 percent following announcements of price cuts by most major cruise lines. Cruise Critic, the leading site that contains user generated cruise reviews, increased its market share of visits by 17 percent for the week ending April 15, 2006 versus the same week last year (week ending April 16, 2005)

The cruises category is highly competitive, with 26.8 percent of all visits to Travel - Cruises sites going to another cruise site for the week ending April 15, 2006. The Cruise Critic Message Board was the leading downstream site for all sites in the Hitwise Travel – Cruises category, accounting for 4.0 percent of the visits leaving Cruise sites, and indicating the research intensive nature of shopping for cruises. An additional 5.5 percent of visits leaving Cruise sites in that period went to search engines, further indicating that cruise shoppers conduct a significant amount of research online.

Long Session Times Indicate High Involvement

For the week ending April 15, 2006 the average session time for a site in the Travel – Cruises category was 10 minutes 3 seconds, 18 percent greater than the average session time for the Travel category as a whole, at 8 minutes 14 seconds. The Cruise Critic Message Board had an average session time of 20 minutes 44 seconds for that week, double the average session time for the Cruises category, indicating the high involvement of those reading and sharing opinions and experiences.

“Travelers are increasingly relying on the opinions of others to aid in planning their travels,” said Bill Tancer, General Manager, Global Research for Hitwise.  “Just as Trip Advisor has become one of the top sites in the Travel – Destinations & Accommodations category because of the popularity of its user generated reviews, potential cruise vacationers are searching for customer reviews and utilizing sites like Cruise Critic to aid in their travel planning.”

Age 55 and up Frequent Cruise Sites

For the four weeks ending April 15, 2006, 34.1 percent of visitors to the Travel – Cruises category were over age 55, compared to 18.8 percent of the average visitor population for the overall Travel category. Visitors to Cruise sites were twice as likely to reside in Florida than the average Internet user, with 12.4 percent of visitors coming from that state in the four weeks ending April 15, 2006. Other states highly represented by visitors to Cruise sites were Eastern Seaboard states like Rhode Island, Delaware, and Maryland.

Contact:

For media inquiries or to schedule an analyst interview, please contact Matt Tatham: matt.tatham@hitwise.com; (212) 380 2939.

About Hitwise:

Hitwise is the leading online competitive intelligence service. Each day, Hitwise monitors how more than 25 million Internet users interact with over 500,000 websites across 160 industry categories.

By monitoring more people, more websites, more often, Hitwise provides marketers with timely and actionable marketing insights on how their online presence compares to competitive websites.  Companies use this information to maximize the return on their online investment, in efforts such as affiliate programs, search marketing, online advertising, content development and lead generation.

Hitwise collects Internet usage information via a combination of ISP data partnerships and opt-in panels, and complies with local and international privacy legislation as audited by PricewaterhouseCoopers. Founded in 1997, Hitwise is a privately held company, headquartered in New York City and operates in the US, UK, Australia, New Zealand, Hong Kong and Singapore. 

More information about the Hitwise Competitive Intelligence service is available at www.hitwise.com.

For up to date analysis on online trends, please visit the Hitwise Intelligence-Analyst Weblogs at weblogs.hitwise.com.