Online travel giants battle to be web favourite

Online travel - you've never had it so good. According to new research into the sector, the UK market is among the most competitive for internet holiday bookings, with dot-com darling lastminute.com losing ground.

The research, from internet watcher Nielsen NetRatings, revealed that expedia.co.uk, not lastminute.com, may well be the UK leader in online travel shopping. According to the figures, expedia.co.uk managed to hook 1.31 million users during the peak July holiday spending spree, with lastminute.com getting 1.24 million.

expedia.co.uk users are also a more leisurely lot than their lastminute.com counterparts, viewing more pages per month and spending longer browsing the site.

Looking at the financials for the third quarter of 2003, however, lastminute.com probably won't be calling a crisis meeting just yet. The company turned in £29.5m of profit for the quarter, with Expedia thought to be totting up a good few million less.

The analyst group predicts that with operators getting ready to slug it out during the next peak holiday-buying period - January and February - pole position could be up for grabs.

But it's not just the heavyweights of the industry making the most of online shoppers. The British enjoy searching for a bargain, with low budget airlines like easyJet and Ryanair among the top 10 most popular sites, pushing top flight carrier British Airways into ninth place. Other cheapie airlines, flybe.com and bmibaby.com, also make a decent showing, scraping into the top 12.