(Length: 4 pages)

Executive Summary (This is a document excerpt)

In 2007, nearly 40 million US households will book travel online, spending $86 billion on airline tickets, lodging, cars, intercity rail, cruises, and packages. With the basics of online selling under their belts, eBusiness executives at travel companies will refine their selling strategies to approach merchandising from a retailer's perspective. Healthy financial performance will allow many travel companies to invest in back-end systems that drive online merchandising, improving the customer experience, and increasing sales through up- and cross-selling. Upselling will be a major goal of product strategy, Web site redesigns, kiosk launches, and mobile marketing, and will be used to justify implementing online customer service applications like click-to-chat and click-to-callback.