Importance of Reliable Web Hosting: How’s the Performance of the Travel Industry?

Many businesses in Exeter have a website presence, but little is clearly understood about the importance of fast, reliable web hosting to ensure a quick loading site that rarely goes offline. Nevertheless, these are two critical aspects businesses should take note of. Indeed, what is more important than an attractively designed website is whether it takes longer than two seconds to load or is offline too frequently. That's why it is essential to use website monitoring tools to manage website performance effectively.

StatusCake, a website monitoring service provider, has recently completed a study of travel and tourism websites selling holidays in the UK and abroad. Their focus was on the uptime (which measures the frequency a site is online) and the site loading speed. 

Let’s see if there are some insights to glean from their findings. 

How Was the Travel Study Conducted?

47 websites were studied from January 21 to February 21, 2019.

Attempts were made every 10 minutes to monitor the uptime and the page load speed for each of the home pages. The data was collected and tabulated to get the final results. 

Typically, an uptime percentage of 99.90% is the benchmark to beat. A page loading time of two seconds or less is considered a minimum because any longer and potential visitors are likely to click their ‘back’ button. Under a second is preferred but this sets a high bar. 

What Separated the Better Performers?

23 websites achieved a 100 percent uptime during the testing period. All except one – CV Villas – loaded in under a second; many in half a second or less.

The fastest was Carnival Corporation (they sell cruises) – EasyCruise came a close second – and the slowest of the group with zero downtime was CV Villas loading in 2.03 seconds. 

What Brought Down the Poorer Performers?

Only six travel sites tested experienced downtime below the 99.90% benchmark. While downtime can become a significant factor over the year, that’s still a respectable performance.

The six sites that fell below the benchmark were PGL.co.uk, CanadianAffair.com, ClarityBusinessTravel.com, FirstChoice.co.uk, AceCulturalTours.co.uk, and NSTGroup.co.uk.

Super Break (superbreak.com) did well with a 99.99% uptime but fell way short with a 2.9 second loading time during tests.

Canadian Affair (CanadianAffair.com) loaded in 1.3 seconds, which is still decent. However, it also had the distinction of a below par 99.79% uptime record. When examining both uptime and loading time, both statistics lagged behind the field.

NST Group’s site had the worst uptime of 98.74% but still managed to load in under half a second, making reliability, not speed, their sticking point.

Conclusion

There was a strong correlation in testing between uptime performance and site loading times. Essentially, investing in better-quality web hosting resulted in greater reliability and a sufficiently-resourced server and connectivity improved site loading speeds. 

Ultimately, a fast loading website that suffers minimal (if any) downtime presents the best opportunity to maximise sales. Rather than call the travel company directly, online consumers are known not to exhibit brand loyalty; slow travel sites are skipped for a faster competitor. Therefore, it’s essential that companies provide a reliable website to capture consumers in a holiday buying frame of mind.

This is a good lesson for local Exeter businesses wanting to gain a nationwide customer base.