Digital hotel and tour bookings become increasingly popular worldwide. In 2015, the total amount of digital travel sales exceeded $533 billion, which is 13.3% higher than in 2014. According to the report by eMarketer, digital sales will continue growing till 2019, mostly thanks to increasing popularity of online travel purchasing in such regions as Asia-Pacific, Middle East, Africa and Latin America. In 2019, the sales are expected to reach their peak level - $762 billion a year.
In 2015, digital travel sales in Asia-Pacific region totaled $139.12 billion, showing a year-to-year growth of 19.8%. According to the forecast, just in the next three years digital travel sales in the region will add another $75 billion. When that happens, Asia-Pacific will surpass North America and will become the largest digital travel market in the world. Thanks to rapid economic development in China, the country has a growing middle class who are willing to spend more on leisure travel. This category of consumers will be the main driving force in the region in coming years. Indian and Indonesian travelers will also contribute to the growth, but in much smaller scale.
Latin America posted significant growth of digital ravel sales in 2014, +20.3% to $29.97 billion in total. However, the total share of the region in global digital sales is only 5.6%. That is better than the Middle East (4.5%) and Central and Eastern Europe (1.8%). Even though Central and Eastern Europe posted the growth of sales of around 9.7% ($9.71 billion), the total digital sales of the region are minimal and barely surpass India with its $9.42 billion. North America remains the leader at the moment with digital travel sales volume reaching $179 billion in 2015. Finally, Western Europe pushed its digital travel sales by 8.0% in 2015 to $151.73 billion in total.