by Mat Churchill

The trend of travellers researching their holidays online has definitely been reflected in the massive increase of traffic to tourismportdoulgas.com.au.

"In the last 12 months our figures have increased by over 80%." said Managing Director of tourismportdouglas.com.au, Sam Cullen. "In the last 30 days page views have increased to over 95,000 (up 83%), total visitation has increased to over 24,000 (up 87%), and we have reached 17,000 unique visitors to our site (up 86%)."

Of the 24,000 visitations, 20,000 of these are from Australia, 1,000 from New Zealand, and 3,000 from the rest of the world.

Josh McConnell, Director and Online Business Manager for tourismportdouglas.com.au, says these figures are significant. "It highlights the fact that, due to influences such as the Global Financial Crisis and weakening dollar, people are looking to travel domestically. Therefore businesses should be looking to direct their marketing budget to domestic campaigns."

"This makes us one the most significantly visited sites in Far North Queensland, doubling any other website in the Douglas Region."

tourismportdouglas.com.au aims to increase exposure for local businesses and business websites in the growing Pre Travel Visitor (PTV) market prior to the travellers' arrival in Port Douglas.

Further proof if any were needed over and above this massive increase in website visitation posted by tourismportdouglas.com.au comes from google.

They have recently published a media release entitled  "Google: the Next Big Thing in Online Travel".  With over 150 millions users every month, Google’s new-found interest in travel should be taken seriously and could have a widespread - perhaps even profound - impact on the entire business, according to analysts.

Travel is a huge, perhaps the biggest, commercial area where online marketing and search meet, and the opportunities for a company like Google to expand its footprint in this space are widespread.

Editors Comments: Would I be wrong in thinking that if I were a travel agent, I should be checking out the employment opportunities with the internet companies?