It is becoming hard to say travel without talking about mobile devices today. By 2014, smartphones and tablets are on track to capture nearly one in five travel dollars. And those who are marketing travel to women should take note of some of the opportunities and challenges.
Travel Decisions Made by Women
Some 80% of all travel decisions are made by women and 40% of travel is planned using a mobile device. The tablet is the preferred device for planning travel and the smartphone is the choice for booking trips while on the go. In fact, three-quarters (76%) of us reach for the smartphone when booking travel on the go.
Poor Mobile Experiences
So you know the drill – you are traveling and something happens to cause you to change your airline reservations. You go to your handy app. But you have a hard time loading the information, it gets confusing and then, you just call the airlines or the hotel or the car rental or the restaurant because it was a hassle figuring it out on that handy app. It’s happened to me before – and apparently, lots of others. A ResearchNow study released by Mobiquity shows the top negatives:
- 60% of smartphone owners, 52% of tablet owners found mobile travel sites slow to load
- 51% of tablet owners rated search and selection options on travel apps as complicated
- 20% of tablet owners were disappointed the apps were not integrated with their loyalty programs
Poor mobile experiences can cause travelers to take an alternative course and could result in decreased revenue for travel brands. More than a third (35%) of connected travelers would be less likely to book again with the travel brand after a slow, confusing of non-optimized experience when research or booking travel on a mobile device. Some of the issues in addition to slow load time are complicated search and selection, poor navigation, not linked to loyalty programs or not designed.
Top Mobile Travel Apps
The top mobile websites mostly include airlines and travel aggregators, such as TripAdvisor and Priceline.com. Of the 8% of iPhone users that use travel apps, the top airline apps are:
United Airlines (1.6%)
Southwest Airlines (1.5%)
Fly Delta (1.3%)
American Airlines (1.3%)
JetBlue (0.5%)
Some of the other popular apps for travel are included in the following infographic:
