FLORENCE, ITALY – Italy tops the list of European countries for lodging available online, with more than one million beds, said a study by PhoCusWright presented at the Buy Tourism Online (BTO) conference on Wednesday December 2, 2015.
Online booking for travel in Italy is a sector worth eight billion euros in 2015, with annual growth of 10%.
However, the study said there is “wide room for improvement” because only 38% of Italian reservations are actually made online – lower than the European average of 47% – with no bridging of this gap in sight over the next two years.
PhoCusWright said the gap is most likely due to a heavier dependence on intermediaries as opposed to direct suppliers (59% versus 41%, respectively), because Italy’s extremely fragmented market includes small businesses that don’t have the technological infrastructure to support direct booking.
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