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.

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Founded by Jean-Baptiste Rudelle, Franck le Ouay and Romain Niccoli in 2005, Criteo is a personalized retargeting company with over 1500 employees worldwide. It involves itself with internet retailers and helps them in displaying personalized online ads to the targeted consumers.

Image Source: Pixabay

Since last year, Criteo reviewed more than 1 billion bookings made by travel suppliers and online travel agencies that exist globally. Recently, they’ve published the travel flash report which highlights a few interesting facts. Here are some of them:

#1. Mobile is the biggest influencer in travel booking

It doesn’t spring a surprise that mobile has been the biggest influencer in travel booking. The share of mobile booking has almost doubled, increasing from 12% to 23% globally. Mobile adoption has grown but is not consistent. Japan leads in the share of bookings coming from mobile devices. Western countries, Latin America and European markets lag behind.

#2. Is there a link between the booking preferences and devices used for it?

The travel flash report states that mobile users prefer to book their flight tickets through tablets. For hotel bookings smart phones are preferred. 14% of the bookings take place through smart-phones and 10% through tablets. It has also been mentioned that in case of urgency, people tend to book through smartphone for discounts and exclusive offers.

#3. Travellers have a preference of when and how they book the tickets

The share of smartphone bookings is higher during the weekends. During weekdays, smartphone bookings are more in the mornings but they decrease as the day progresses. For simple booking, smartphones are often preferred but when it comes to comparing prices, the same group of people chose desktops. This might be possible since desktops have a bigger screen. So, it’s convenient to compare prices then.

#4. The longer the stay, the bigger the screen!

This might be a surprise for many! The travel flash report states that when bookings have to be made for shorter stays, travellers tend to use smartphones. ‘Smartphones in particular account for just 10 percent of the bookings for stays of a week or more, but they account for 18 percent of one-night stays.’ Tablets constitute 10% of the one-night stay bookings.

#5. Travel Season = Mobile Season

Most of the people travel to their favourite destinations during springs and summers. In these seasons, mobile adoption increases and their usage too. Especially, from January to June in most of the regions except in the Southern Hemisphere.

#6. Hotel OTAs v/s Hotel Suppliers

OTAs lead the bookings made via smartphones in comparison to hotel suppliers. The disparity b/w the two is quite wide and OTAs account for almost thrice the bookings made by hotel suppliers themselves.

For the complete travel flash report, click here.

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