Travel sites to be blown out the water by airline venture

Some of Europe's largest airlines are set to unveil the details of a joint venture flight booking website next week.

Nine airlines, including Air France, British Airways and KLM have colluded in the online travel portal, which looks set to give the likes of Expedia and Travelocity a rough ride - albeit a year after it was first announced.

Orbitz, a similar venture that went live in the US at the start of June is being sued by Dallas-based Southwest Airlines for creating unfair competition and using false advertising.

The US consortium averaged 2,000 visitors a minute, and clocked up $9m in ticket sales in its first week.

Independent online travel companies are also seeing the market squeezed from the customer end too.

Forrester Research said today that online consumer spend in the US fell $400m in May, attributed to a seasonal drop in online travel bookings.

Previously Forrester has said 14 per cent of travel sales will be made over the internet by 2005, bolstering sales to £3.7bn.