The entire tavel industry has rapidly adapted to online presence with the boom of smartphones in the present day scenario. Hundreds of online bookings and organic travel content with respect to the sector has given research data analysts and decision makers, a front row observation seat to fully summarize what it thinks of the state of affairs be like. In such an effort to make the trends more comprehendible, Criteo and PhocusWright came together to talk about the online travel market especially of the Indian subcontinent.
Criteo had invited over Phocuswright to share latest data and trends in online travel that revolved around the consumption of online content by Indian audiences and how their behaviour would further affect the current and the future trends in the travel and hospitality sector. The extensive usage of mobile platform to book millions of services has made it look like a luxury on tips for the service providers or the consumers. These are the key observations based on the September publication of Criteo leverage the mobile opportunity with respect to the coming summer season of travel.
A market overview
The total travel market of India for 2016 is estimated at $28 billion with around 10.36% of online penetration. It is expected to grow by 2020 reaching around 41% of online penetration. According to the Criteo report, smartphone bookings are expected to rise with the last-minute bookings topping the chart of online devices and state of art mobile apps generating majority of online bookings.
OTA is the ringmaster
OTAs have positioned themselves as a priority player when it comes to searching and comparing. They are best suited to capture the largest share of hotel bookings. The smartphones are the game changers especially for OTAs. The air sector has made a point to put its inventory on the OTAs as two-thirds of air ticketing happens there and one-third direct.
Although the medium businesses and smaller properties are still lagging behind in connection, budget hotel brands like OYO rooms, Fab Hotels, Treebo are focusing on bringing service consistency and online enablement of budget hotel properties with smaller room size.
Slower mobile penetration
The rate at which the Indian market is engaging mobile content is slow. Its not strong as it should be. That’s because the providers are still unable to cater to a seamless mobile experience despite the market is ready. The mobile booking penetration for 2016 is at 22% with a strong market for mobile app usage up to 40%. This indicates that there are strong players in app distribution front.
Payment still crawls at a toise speed as cash remains as a dominant method of transactions. Other transit platforms like Ola and Uber are creating a wave of caprice which would further boost the mobile booking share in travel in years to come.
The conclusions that could be drawn from this report are:
1-India is predominantly an Android market.
2-App bookings are on the rise.
3-A fully optimized mobile platform is a must- have.
The Criteo Travel Flash report could be found here.
