Top 10 Travel Web Sites Include Airlines Southwest, Delta

(MoneyWatch)  Periodically, I'm going to be checking into how travel Web sites are performing in the U.S. and the world. This week, Experian Hitwise, which measures a sample of 25 million Internet users and 10 million in the United States, to figure out Internet data and behavior, ranked the top travel Web sites.* (Note: The top 20 travel Web sites included Google, Yahoo! and Bing maps as well as MapQuest, which for our purposes aren't travel Web sites. So, I took the liberty of pulling out only online travel agencies, or places one can book travel, and travel-oriented sites.)

Expedia 3.39%

Southwest Airlines 2.19

Travelocity 2.12

Priceline.com 1.85

TripAdvisor 1.66

Orbitz 1.63

Delta Air Lines 1.28

Yahoo! Travel 1.22

Hotwire 1.21

Cheapoair.com 0.98

*For the week ending Feb. 6, 2010
Others down the list included American Airlines, Bookingbuddy.com (part of Smarter Travel Media), Hotels.com and Kayak. Not surprisingly, the online travel agencies at the top of the list are the ones that probably pay the most in advertising costs, while Southwest Airlines appears high in the rankings -- most likely due to its low fares and the fact it doesn't take part in the many online travel agencies.

Delta Air Lines also makes an appearance, just beneath the majority of high-powered OTAs and user-generated review site TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor, which doesn't offer plane tickets or hotels is a rarity in the market, offering only reviews from fellow travelers. Apparently the Web site has also fallen in recent weeks while Priceline.com has risen in popularity. Some say this is because Tripadvisor has come under fire by hotels for posting malicious reviews, sometimes by a competing hotel that also sings its own praises.

Rounding out the list are Cheapoair.com, Lowfares.com and Cheap Tickets, all of which specialize in low fares.

The numbers for travel Web sites aren't huge but reflect the number of people looking for travel deals. That there aren't more airline Web sites, and for that matter, hotel Web sites, on the list shows that the travel industry has a way to go before it becomes synonymous with the Internet. Until then, third-party travel agencies will reap the benefits.