A female traveler decided to plan her trip on her own after a colleague’s constant raves over online travel services. The Internet has allowed her to reel off from her own travel coup lists. Round trip train ticket from Chicago to New York for only 33 dollars, 26 dollars only for an Austin, Texas hotel suite as well as airfare to Denver for 100 dollars which also takes her back to her original point of destination, and this is just the start.

Exceptional deals await those who would want to get away and relax somewhere for the weekend. Consumers these days depend on the Web for their travel bookings in extremely higher figures, driven by airline fare wars found online, speedy Internet connections that enable people to shop conveniently and the cherry on top is the tantalizing notion that a handful of jaw dropping bargains can be found in just one click. An independent team specializing on travel research states that last year, over 35 million Americans bought their travel needs online. Nineteen million more researched destinations or places there, the company said.

Solely in this year, the Internet is expected to make $ 53 billion or more of the leisure trip bookings that compose 22 percent of the revenue of the travel industry, as revealed in the projections done by another company specializing in travel research. There is immense growth in online travel. It has managed to be stronger than our expectations. These days are seen with tons of incredible deals. Thanks to airline wars that have intensified anew, people can expect dramatic upward movements in the years to come, the chief executive of a Chicago based online travel agency asserts.

Carriers among the low cost brackets are able to compete by adding more routes and planes and force a response of bigger rivals that slash their transcontinental fares. If you have been able to go from the East Coast to the West Coast and are aware of the prices of plane tickets to Florida, then you’re among those who are aware that it is a bloodbath, with the high costs of fuel, new capacity in the marketplace as well as major airlines’ lowered cost of labor. Airline companies are now struggling with the toughest financial year ever since the year 2001 because of the immense competition, he further adds.

But the field of online travel, as long as it is a safe environment for travel, these prices are very stimulative to the marketplace for those who go for volume more than outright high sales. But profitability is an issue for many travel dot coms. As an industry leader boasts of a huge bottom line, two of the largest names in online travel today that are even backed up by five biggest American airline corporations are still sweating it on as they try to attain net profit despite the fact that they already have impressive sales.

All of the increasingly Web savvy consumers will transact business with any Internet site which offers them a better price and this makes getting more revenue tough. There is brand loyalty in 35 percent of online travelers. For instance, a Web surfer’s technique in doing travel planning is by strictly going to all the key Web sites. To get the best hotel, airline, car and train deals, a couple searches online.

It is just sad that this has damaged the business of travel agents, even when agents are at the edge with their ability to offer advice and help in avoiding booking sales for those with little ability or patience to look for the best deals. But the way I see it is if you have a computer, why would you bother with a travel agent? The hotel market has become one of the hottest sectors of online travel, accounting for $ 8.7 billion in leisure bookings in 2003.

With the amount spent on investment and promotion by the two biggest online travel service providers, the market share war has turned up a notch. In terms of capturing more corporate accounts, both prove to be successful. For many analysts, the key to success for the online agencies is the shift toward packaging air, car rental and hotel together in one affordable and reasonable price. At least half of its earnings, for the very first time now, will be coming from other sources and not just airplane ticket sales. Sizzling hot is one way that he described travel packages. As this sizzles on, more people espouse it and more will in the coming years.