BULLETINS

As per the study report submitted by PhoCusWright at the ITB Berlin in March 2011 the buying and booking behavior of travellers from UK, Germany and France throws up some interesting details.

Here are some excerpts

• The traffic forecast is positive in general with France leading the way. Germany has moderate projections with UK only slight growth rates.

• The influence of the internet in making travel plans is almost complete with only 5% of UK travellers admitting that they would do a travel plan offline. It was 6% in the case of France and 9% for Germany

• When searching on the net normal Search engines hold the key. Contrary to popular belief Google and Bing is used by more people than an Expedia or Travelocity for travel research purposes.

• Price is only secondary with more users admitting that they would use a portal that gives them better and positive user experience. Cheap is not working anymore!

• Smartphoneadoption is reaching  critical mass with most travellers using phones with web browsing capabilities

• Mobile travelis growing fast but still small. Only less than 10% of travellers have used mobile for any travel booking purposes. Indications are this could be double in the coming years.

• The age groupof 18-24 is the ones with the most leisure time to travel and they being the most tech-savvy group the growth of Online travel is sure to be positive only.