Doom and gloom in the online US travel market ...so they say

Travelmole has picked up a story from eMarketer saying that there is trouble ahead for online travel because US growth rates from here until 2010 will only be 17% a year down from the 28% per year enjoyed from 2002 to 2006. The end of the world is nigh! Baloney!. Just a press release from a research org to generate buzz around their research. The key to the story is not that the US online travel market is either slowing in its growth or that there is a risk of commoditization of travel - the true story is that this year online travel will be more than 50% of the market. The story is not about the pain in online travel but the pain in offline. At 50% plus of the market the online industry goes beyond being a mature sector of the overall market to being THE market [full stop]. Research firms need to shift their thinking from hyper growth being necessary to talk about online travel's success to the complete redefinition of the market that is now a reality.