Research house eMarketer has updated its forecasts for digital global travel sales and now thinks the total for 2020 will be more than $817 billion.

Its study looks at leisure and unmanaged business travel bought via any device, with the estimates “based on an analysis of quantitative and qualitative data from research firms, government agencies, media firms and public companies, plus interviews with top executives at publishers, ad buyers and agencies.”

The global picture for online travel is healthy, although annual growth will slow over the next few years.

APAC and Latin America will drive the growth with APAC becoming a bigger market than North America in 2017.

APAC is seeing some exchange rate benefits in terms of the region’s currencies’ strength against the dollar while other currencies weaken.

Clearly China is driving this regional shift and by 2020 China will account for nearly 25% of the world’s total online sales. But in volume terms, measured in dollars, China will still be a smaller market than the US in 2020 at $198 billion compared with $213 billion.

The country rankings for growth show some significant differences to the volumes chart, with Argentina identified as the country with the biggest potential in terms of growth rates, although its volumes remain modest.

But China still dominates the digital travel sweetspot in terms of increases in volume and growth, with another of the so-called emerging markets, India, appearing high on both charts.

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