By BOB TEDESCHI September 5, 2005
AS the Gulf Coast reels from Katrina's devastation, online businesses are struggling to gauge the impact of the possible loss of half a million prospective customers for weeks or months.
"This is a tough one, because it is a big market," said Patti Freeman Evans, an analyst with Jupiter Research, an Internet consulting firm. "You can't get goods in there, and people aren't in their homes anyway, so there's not much companies can do."
According to comScore Networks, an Internet research and consulting firm, 860,000 people, on average, surfed the Web from their homes or offices in New Orleans and the Mississippi towns of Biloxi and Gulfport each day in the week preceding the storm.
People who fled the Gulf Coast will no doubt find Internet access in their temporary homes, but few are likely to look on the Web for the necessities of life.
Online travel agencies like Expedia, Travelocity and Orbitz are no doubt feeling the pinch more than most online retailers. Not only must they cope with a deluge of calls from customers who had booked trips to the Gulf Coast and now want their money back, they must also face up to the possibility of a slump in sales as some vacationers and business executives deterred from flying to New Orleans drop their travel plans altogether.