Digital 100 Travel Winner: Capital One Travel

Online travel agents, cruises and international airlines show pent-up demand still evident, even as consumers become more frugal

Capital One Travel led the Digital 100 for Travel in 2022, with the remarkable growth of 774%. Demand for international travel and cruises dominated the list, but growth in deal-minded online travel agents (OTAs) shows travelers are becoming more budget conscious.

Travel and Tourism is one of 10 key categories that make up the annual Similarweb Digital 100 ranking of the fastest-growing companies on the web. The ranking is based on desktop and mobile web traffic from the United States (see also the reports for the U.K., Germany, France, and Japan, with one for Australia to follow.

Key takeaways

• Capital One Travel saw 774% growth in web traffic in 2022, benefiting from the year of “Revenge Travel”, but also aided by increased deal searches among travelers. Second on the list was the deal-minded OTA ladybug, with 528% growth.
• Cruise sites made up four of the top ten, led by Virgin Voyages which saw 224% growth in 2022, followed by Cruises.com with 209% growth. Other cruise-related entrants on the list were Holland America with 185% growth (eighth place) and cheapcruises.com with 182% growth (9th place).
• International airlines seem to have benefited from pent-up demand with El Al coming in fifth place with 204% growth and Singapore Air seeing 196% growth (sixth place). Aerlingus came in seventh with 190% growth. As this traffic is all U.S.-based, it shows that American travelers are highly interested in international travel, after years of Covid related restrictions.

Capital One Travel leads, followed by OTAs, Cruises International Airlines

Similarweb’s Digital-100 Travel List is dominated by OTAs, cruises, and international airlines, highlighting three key trends. Pent-up demand for travel has shifted to the two areas that opened up last after the pandemic shut-downs: International travel and cruises. At the same time, given inflation and economic uncertainty, customers are using OTAs to look for deals, but still want to travel.

The Digital 100 Travel Top 10

Capital One Travel’s growth aided by brand support, strong advertising

Capitalonetravel.com led our D-100 travel list in the United States in 2022, with a 724% growth in traffic. The site, which is supported by the Capital One brand, both aids with booking trips and provides lounge access at airports, while at the same time serving the purpose of expanding the use of Capital One credit cards. In fact, 95% of referring traffic comes from capitalone.com. Site traffic is also supported by a broad advertising campaign that spans multiple media types.

The below chart shows site traffic over the past two years, and you can see the growth has been substantial.

In terms of marketing channels, the site does get most of its traffic from direct searches (49%) and organic searches (41%), but has also got an increasing boost from referral traffic (7% of total traffic, of which 95% came from capitalone.com) and paid search (2.5% of total traffic). Display ads have only provided 0.3% of traffic, but the company has increased its use of them in the last few months. You can see growth in paid search, display ads, and referral traffic in the chart below.

In terms of demographics, Capital One Travel skews males by a 55/44% margin and the largest age categories are the 25-34 year old cohort with 29% of traffic and the 35-44 year-old group with 24% of traffic.

More from the Digital 100

For more details, visit the Similarweb Insights blog for posts on individual categories. A series of infographics are also available for the media and use on social media.

Eligibility criteria: The rankings are based on industry categories Similarweb tracks on an ongoing basis, ranked based on year-over-year change in their total traffic for 2022 over 2021. To qualify for the U.S. ranking, a domain had to average at least 100,000 monthly views for 2022 and 50,000 for 2021. Domains that had no measurable traffic at the beginning of 2021 were also eliminated.

The Similarweb Insights & Communications team is available to pull additional or updated data on request for the news media (journalists are invited to write to press@similarweb.com). When citing our data, please reference Similarweb as the source and link back to the most relevant blog post or similarweb.com/blog/insights/.

Methodology

Disclaimer: All data, reports and other materials provided or made available by Similarweb are based on data obtained from third parties, including estimations and extrapolations based on such data. Similarweb shall not be responsible for the accuracy of the materials and shall have no liability for any decision by any third party based in whole or in part on the materials.

by Jim Corridore

Senior Analyst

Jim provides insights across multiple sectors. With 30 years on Wall Street and numerous awards for stock-picking, he is a SUNY Albany graduate.