what are you afraid of?

[KCFlyer]

According to Southwest's annual report, they had over $6 billion in passenger revenues, and 59% of those revenues came thru their web site.

 

[luver41]

According to Southwest's annual report, they had over $6 billion in passenger revenues, and 59% of those revenues came thru their web site.

Laura Wright said in yesterday's earnings conference call that for the fourth quarter 2005, 69 percent of Southwest Airline's bookings were made through its web site, up from 63 percent the previous quarter.

 

[sfb]

One tidbit which hasn't been mentioned and which I'd forgotten until a couple of days ago is a bit of history. Back in 1994, two of the major GDS's (Apollo and System One) more-or-less dumped Southwest on very short notice; this forced Southwest into a more direct model almost overnight. I think they very quickly realized how much money they could save by not paying GDS fees and marketing directly to the customers, rather than relying on travel agents. The emergence of the Web as a sales outlet within a couple of years and technology advances which made ticketless travel possible all helped to reinforce Southwest's direct model.

Southwest flew 77.7 million revenue passengers last year. At $5 a head as suggested by PineyBob, and with 69% booking on southwest.com, that's $268 million a year.

 

[mga707]

Thank you! and for those of us with short attention apans what was US Loss for the year?

Don't think that US has as of yet reported their financials. Next week?

 

[mrman]

Other stats from WN website:
southwest.com
In 2004, passenger revenue generated by online bookings equaled 59 percent compared to approximately 54 percent in 2003. In third quarter 2005, approximately 65 percent of passenger revenue was generated by online bookings via southwest.com.
More than 5 million people subscribe to Southwest’s weekly Click ‘N Save e-mails.
In June 2004, Southwest celebrated the launch of its Spanish booking engine, southwest.com/vamonos, where Customers can make flight reservations and find helpful information, including Southwest’s policies, travel tips, airport information, and route map entirely in Spanish. Southwest is among the first major airlines to offer such a service.
SWABIZ, Southwest’s free online booking tool that allows business travelers to plan, purchase, and track business travel, saw bookings increase by more than 80 percent in 2004.
Southwest was the first airline to establish a home page on the Internet. Initially, five Employees comprised Southwest’s web site development team, and the site took about nine months to create.
southwest.com is the number one airline website for online revenue according to PhoCusWright. Nielsen/Netratings also reports that southwest.com is the largest airline site in terms of unique visitors.
The “Southwest Shortcut†feature on southwest.com is the first online tool that helps Customers find the lowest fare based on availability over an entire month.
DING!, a downloadable desktop application that notifies Customers of exclusive hot offers, was introduced in February 2005. Southwest was the first airline to implement this type of tool.


2005 stats from Nielson:
Popular Online Travel Destinations
With nearly 50 percent of airline ticket sales and reservations conducted exclusively online during the last
six months, according to the Nielsen//NetRatings @Plan Summer 2005 release, online airline suppliers
have a stronger foothold in conversion. Agencies fared better in drawing visitors to the site for price
comparison shopping, destination searches and multi-trip bookings.
Southwest Airlines, American Airlines and Delta ranked as the three most visited airline Web sites during
April 2005. Southwest led with 8.1 million unique Web surfers, compared to 5.7 million and 4.9 million that
visited American and Delta, respectively (see Table 1). Southwest converted the most lookers into
bookers with a 14 percent visitor conversion rate, followed by Delta and American with 10 and nine
percent.
Table 1: Top 3 Airline Web Sites Ranked by Visitors, April 2005 (U.S., Home & Work)
Airlines Unique Audience* (000) Visitor Conversion Rate**
Southwest Airlines 8,141 14%
American Airlines 5,663 9%
Delta 4,912 10%
* Source: Nielsen//NetRatings NetView, June 2005
** Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Travel, June 2005
Online travel agencies attracted up to twice the number of visitors as airlines during April 2005. Expedia
led by drawing 16.3 million unique visitors to its site, with Travelocity and Orbitz ranking as the second
and third most popular online travel agency with nearly 12 million each (see Table 2). Expedia, Orbitz and
Travelocity secured conversion rates of nearly five percent, four percent and three percent, respectively.
Table 2: Top 3 Online Travel Agencies Ranked by Visitors, April 2005 (U.S., Home & Work)
Travel Agencies Unique Audience* (000) Visitor Conversion Rate**
Expedia 16,260 5%
Travelocity 11,714 3%
Orbitz 11,616 4%
* Source: Nielsen//NetRatings NetView, June 2005
** Source: Nielsen//NetRatings MegaView Travel, June 2005
“As suppliers and agencies struggle to gain the competitive edge, supplier sites are beginning

 

[corl737]

Southwest converted the most lookers into bookers with a 14 percent visitor conversion rate, followed by Delta and American with 10 and nine percent.

It would be interesting to see the conversion rate adjusted to exclude site visits by those of us who are just looking for the best schedules to nonrev with no intention of purchasing a ticket.