Durban - Expedia, which says it is the world's largest online travel company, has released data showing a 27% increase in the number of travel bookings being made to Africa and the Indian Ocean regions.
The bookings are on Expedia and Hotels.com travel sites worldwide over the past 12 months, with the majority of international consumer demand coming from travelers in the U.K., the U.S. and France.
The number of Africa and Indian Ocean region hotels currently working with Expedia has also increased, growing well over 100% during the same period of time.
Diego Lofeudo, Expedia Market Director for Africa, said in a press release: “Ultimately our goal is to bring Africa to the online travel marketplace, and online travel to Africa, and as such we're very much looking forward to further developing relationships with hotels throughout Africa and assisting them in developing more effective online distribution strategies to achieve their occupancy and revenue goals.”
Today Expedia offers more than 135,000 hotels on its travel booking sites, making available those hotels on the more than 100 localized Expedia and Hotels.com online travel sites in over 60 countries across the globe. Collectively, these sites attract more than 50 million travel shoppers each month.
Representatives from Expedia will be in Durban, South Africa later this week to exhibit at the fifth-annual Indaba Travel Show from May 7 to 10.