Travel is in the top five categories that people access on their mobiles and the reach of mobile has now outstripped fixed use, reveals the new Mobile Insights Travel report from GfK Mobile Insights on the mobile behaviours of the UK travel market.
The report from GfK, a leading market research company, is gathered from live network operator data that is constantly monitored and covers 200,000 participants across UK on their travel habts from the very first touchpoint till their final decision making.
Mobile web, according to the report, provides a digital channel that might have been tailor-made for holiday travel companies. Its on-the-go immediacy and convenience has resulted in 25% of all mobile users reaching for their phones to research, plan, compare and book their holiday.
Young professional are more inclined to book holidays on their mobile, as one of the findings revealed. A young female aged between 18 and 34, earning £10-40K, and on her lunch break at work between Tuesday and Thursday, is a prime user of mobile to research her next holiday. However, an older male in a lower social class is more likely to be scanning the national lottery and Daily Mail or checking the weather forecast
The top three sites for booking are TripAdvisor UK, Booking.com and Lastminute.com. The aggregators/comparison sites have the higher levels of reach vs. brand specifics such. Easyjet.com, Britishairways.com and Thomascook.com
The top iOS apps are Skyscanner, TripAdvisor and British Airways, with the list largely focussed on major brands and definitive tasks.
Here is summary of the findings from the report: (see details in the slides below)
• Mobile offers greater personalisation and on-going engagement opportunities while the consumer is out and about, and the chance to disrupt the purchase journey and steer it in a different direction.
• As the top three sites, TripAdvisor.com, Booking.com and Lastminute.com, only account for 21% of sessions and a similar percentage of time spent, there’s a long tail of sites with 90% of users time spent across the top 450 sites. Marketing departments have to find a way to gain traction in such a vastly populated channel and optimise messaging and penetration
• Only 6% of iOS users rely on app to do holiday research, which is largely site than app based. While TripAdvisor’s experience mirrors the industry norm with an 85%/10% split in site/app usage, Skyscanner bucks the trend with more app-centric activity with 62% of visitors using the app.
• An interesting fact is the app attracts a slightly more even gender mix, across higher incomes. Marketers may wish to investigate a more app-led future to gain traction with affluent audiences. Even the research/comparison sites that tend to gain a greater number of traction browsers who flick between sites might benefit from the closed ecosystem that apps offer to encourage repeat usage.
So how does mobile fit into overall digital strategy? It’s all about timing and relevance, according to the report: “Few travel companies have a mobile only strategy so it’s also important to balance mobile web with fixed use. British Airways offers an app, but 17% of their users also visit britishairways.com. The 46% of fixed online users who access travel-related sites may be declining 5% year on year, but it is still represents a significant proportion. People using the app also use hotel sites such as Hilton; they are not searching for package holidays and tend to be more affluent.”
• Photo credit (mobile phones): Daboost/Shutterstock
source:webintravel.com
