As per a recent report published by Sabre during the IATA World Passenger Summit in Barcelona, Europeans spend more time searching for flights than actually flying, in a process complicated by a vast variety of search and flight options available.
As per the findings 43% of Western Europeans will first spend an average of 3.5 hours in flight searching and bookings process then only they are expected to fly to warmer climates this winter.
One in ten travellers will spend 7 hours searching for their flight before planning trips from London to New York for Christmas shopping. Sometimes they even visit 38 websites before making a booking.
According to a survey conducted by Sabre among 2,200 consumers from Western Europe (UK, Germany, Spain and Italy) about their pre-travel experiences , 25-34-year-olds spend the longest amount of time finding the right flights – 4 hours 9 minutes, which is longer than most inter-European flights
The over-55s spend the least amount of time at just 3 hours 45 minutes.
Italian travellers spend the most time finding their perfect flights (4 hours 8 minutes). Italian women aged 25-34 took almost 6 hours the most time of all groups.
Spanish travellers took just 2 hours 47 minutes.
This study had good news for those airlines planning their personalisation strategies around passenger data.
Author: Anush Mathews
Anush works as QA Lead in Teknokraaft and works with our OTA team.