Booking online: Richard Carrick on how the travel market has changed

Potted history of the last five years, anyone? Richard Carrick is on the case:

You had a sequential, time bound process. You knew how consumers were going to
behave. Arguably we forced them into that kind of behaviour... The way business
came in was very predictable, and you had known ROI

Ah, yes. So what happened?

Up come stats on low-costs: 6m seats in 1995, 90m today. The majority of these seats are being sold online, observes Richard.

Up come stats on holidays: The number of people taking multiple holidays rather than one big one.

And here's internet penetration: It's in 60% of all households. Broadband's in 50%.

'Lump all these trends together and you see what's happening to the market,' says Richard.

Indeed...