Travel agents get 16% of online traffic, travel search engines - only 0.42%

Forrester Research estimates that 29.4 mln US households will use the Internet to book travel in this calendar year, spending $53 bln in the process. As of mid-November, the top six travel search engines held a combined 0.42% share of all traffic to online travel sites, according to Hitwise, an Internet research firm. In contrast, Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz held a combined 16% share of online travel traffic. SideStep says its software has been downloaded more than 7 million times.