One of the most hopeful seasons for the transporters of the intermunicipal segment in Colombia was the end of the year of 2021, as it was the great opportunity to have a normal operation for the first time in two years. The results were very satisfactory, in order to reactivate, people went out again and trusted the bus, although there were also important lessons regarding the work that companies must do to achieve digitalization that translates into an increase in effective sales.
It also implies hard work to ensure that the positioning of companies in cyberspace improves and that they are taken into account by travelers. On the other hand, we have repeatedly mentioned the great advantage that specialized online bus ticket sales portals or online traffic agencies (known as OTAs in English) have taken from bus companies with respect to the generation of web traffic and its ability to capture the user.
Once again, thanks to the help of Reservamos SaaS, we present the results for January 2022.
WHAT DID RESERVADOS FOUND?
In January 2022, especially after the beginning of the year festivities, the generation of web traffic decreased significantly compared to December 2021. The 28 main intermunicipal transport companies in Colombia generated 683,631 registrations on the web, reporting a drop 57% compared to the immediately previous month.
For their part, the two main OTAs were responsible for generating, during January 2022, 1,426,700 web traffic records on their portals, which translated into a 60% decrease compared to December 2021. Both for these portals specialized, such as bus companies, the results of online movement were even below what was reported in January 2020.
While OTAs slightly lost ground in generating web traffic compared to bus companies in January 2022, and market share shrank, bus companies are even weaker. In the latter, online traffic records during the first month of the year were barely 46% of what was generated two years ago, when they achieved 1,474,000 visits to their own channels.
HOW ARE THE MAIN COLOMBIAN COMPANIES?
Regarding the main companies that generate web traffic in Colombia, the tip did not change because Expreso Brasilia continued to be the one with the largest market share, which even grew by 19% during January 2022, so the company from Barranquilla approached the 40%.
Copetran and Expreso Bolivariano usually take second place, although on this occasion, the 36% decrease in traffic generation by Bolivariano is significant. With greater difference, Berlinas del Fonce monopolizes the fourth site and also had an outstanding growth, increasing its capacity to generate web traffic by 12.5%, while the remaining companies did not register variations.
Regarding the bus sector in the Western Hemisphere, the generation of traffic during January 2022 had a significant decrease and only Chile, the United States and Peru reported positive figures, growing 4%, 3% and 1% respectively. However, this was not enough to compensate for the regional drop, as Colombia had the worst performance, falling 59% compared to December 2021, followed by Mexico (-41%); Argentina and Uruguay (-30%), Brazil (-30%).
It should be remembered that during December 2021, Colombia had shown the best performance, growing 50% in web traffic generation, compared to the previous November.