Nearly 80 per cent of online Canadians use the Web to find travel information and plan a trip, a new study has found.
A leisure travel study by market research firm NFO CFgroup found that only 14 per cent of Canadian Internet users think they can get better deals from a bricks and mortar travel agency than online, and 18 per cent prefer printed travel catalogues to online information.
NFO CFgroup public affairs director David Stark says service fees added by travel agents to ticket prices – a result of cuts to commissions in recent years – may partly explain why many Canadian Internet users believe there are better travel deals online.
The study also found that online Canadians plan to travel more during 2002 than they did in 2001. Only 11 per cent say safety concerns in the wake of last September’s terrorist attacks will make them travel less this year.
The survey was conducted using the firm’s national weekly Internet omnibus service, NFO Fast Feedback. E-mail invitations were sent to 2,500 members of NFO CFgroup’s Internet panel comprising 35,000 Canadian Internet users who have agreed to participate in survey research from time to time.
In total, 949 online interviews were completed between Feb. 6 and 13, a 38-per-cent response rate.
The survey results are nationally representative of the online Canadian adult population and are considered accurate to within 3.2 percentage points, 19 times out of 20.
