Backlink concern

[seointerest]

I have a hotel booking related web site (city+hotels keyword) and I'm in the keyword research phase. I was checking the backlinks of the top 10 sites that rank for the exact keyword phrase (city + hotels) and some of the major travel sites like Expedia and Trip Advisor have around 2000 backlinks (each).

I used the Yahoo Site Explorer to find this out. When I looked at the web sites linking to Trip Advisor's particular page I noticed all the links were coming from otherTrip Advisor pages. Same with Expedia.

1) Has anyone ever experienced this with travel sites? These seem to be internal links, not external sites linking to Expedia or Trip Advisor.

2) Do you consider 2000 backlinks to be steep competition? Would you refrain from targeting the keyword?