Asia-Pacific has already overtaken the US in terms of growth rates in online travel, according to PhoCusWright analyst Clement Wong at the WebinTravel conference in Singapore. In particular, and no surprise given the size of their respective populations, India and China are forecast to dominate growth in online travel over the course of the next few years.

PhoCusWright also estimates that in 2012, Europe will become the largest online travel sector, while Asia-Pacific will account for roughly 20% of the market worldwide.

Wong and others in Singapore signal a number of key factors driving growth:
- Growing middle class (with a desire to travel, especially overseas) in both India and China
- Rising adoption of credit and debit cards across the region, giving users easier means of securing travel products immediately over the web, although some countries still have widespread book online-pay offline policies in place.
- Similar to the spurts in growth in the west in the early to mid-2000s, rapid expansion of web connectivity in the home and businesses - alongside prolific use of mobile web.

Interestingly, according to Wong, car rental will form a significant part of the services in demand by travellers.