Web travel bookings - now the middlemen suffer

The war between direct online travel sales vs middlemen / 3rd party sellers goes on.. now a new survey claims that direct bookings are on the increase. A lot of savvy surfers are using 3rd parties to compare and pull rates from a variety of sources and then booking directly, much to the delight of travel and accommodation providers.

"Internet monitors Hitwise said although website visits to online travel agents remained stable in 2005, visits to hotel and airline websites grew almost 20 per cent."