Travel is increasingly becoming a near-perfect niche market if you happen to be a content publisher - billions of prospects, big name travel companies offering lucrative affiliate programs, huge variety of Adsense ads (and in this market people often research their holidays/travel online & via Adsense) and a perfect market to create the new age of interactive websites (wait till you see how I'll help you to do this).

But first, there's a big trend change happening in the travel industry - as the whole world comes online, and people feel more comfortable purchasing products online, we're seeing a massive trend change in the way people are booking holidays, short breaks, hotels, flights etc - from offline to online.

"American Express Business Travel today reported a staggering 310 percent increase in online travel booking and processing across its client base in Europe over the last twelve months" - American Express

And it's the same story across the board - Thomson Travel (one of UK's biggest travel companies) reported that online bookings are expected to exceed offline holiday bookings in 2007 for the first time ever. This is huge for the travel industry but it's even bigger for the smart niche & content marketer as we'll see shortly (hint - the number of pedigree sites in this market compared to the number of prospects is in a shocking state of imbalance).

Why are people flocking to book online? It's simple - a mix of greater access to internet technology (practically everyone has internet access now), lower cost of holidays online (versus the same deal offline) and convenience means that the majority of people are now using their laptops to arrange all their leisure and business travel. The bottom line is that over the next five years, a very large proportion of all travel will be booked online (one estimate I read was claiming 90% by 2010) and now is an ideal time to start building a portfolio of income optimised niche travel websites to take full advantage of this trend.