With the year 2011 coming to an end soon it would be nice to know about what could be the trends and patterns for the coming years. Had a chance to go through Google's Think travel paper and here are some interesting facts.
1. The outlook for travel continued to be positive in 2011, as most of the travelers are planning to take the ‘same or more’ trips in the coming years.
87 % of regular travelers and 89 % of business travelers are planning to travel the same or more in the coming periods.
2. The internet is still the favored and popular choice for doing research and for booking travel.
59% of travelers do not mind spending time on the internet researching before they make decisions as they feel that they can increase the value and reduce the cost of travel by doing so. 85% of travelers rely on Internet as their primary source for travel information. This is up from 79% in 2009.
3. Personal travelers rely on search engines as their source of information for travel. Ease of use and cost are the 2 factors driving it.
55% of travelers say "always start my travel searching and booking process with search". 61% of travelers agree that search engines are my go-to source for travel information". 79% of travelers who use search engines find them extremely or very useful.
4. Contribution of mobile devices to travel activity continues to grow.
51% of business travelers and 27% of personal travelers now use mobile phones to access internet for travel info. 54% of business travelers have downloaded a travel app to their mobile device in the last 2 years.
5. Online videos are increasingly becoming popular.
Travelers are now interested to watch travel related online more and online videos are now part of all phases of travel planning.
Hope this gives some idea about the directions that Online travel is going to take in the coming period and how Travel Technology players can contribute to the same.
Data Source : The Traveler’s Road to Decision 2011 (Google/IPSOS OTX Media CT US, July 2011)
Author: Manoj .S
Manoj works as Team Lead in Teknokraaft and looks into the Flights vertical primarily