Statistics are often insightful and occasionally confusing, and some of the headline findings in a new study from the World Youth Student and Educational (WYSE) Travel Confederation fall into the latter category.
The Millennial Traveller report questioned more than 7,600 travellers, aged 18 - 30, from over 100 countries.
It found that only 7% of the sample have booked a flight using their mobile phone or tablet computer. Half-full analysis would see this in terms of potential growth; half-empty analysis would suggest that mobile transactions for air, despite the hype, are still niche.
Without access to breakdown by specific source markets, sweeping statements about whether or not mobile bookings for air transport are gaining any traction with 18-30-year-olds are potentially flawed.
But for comparison, Criteo's Travel Flash Report found that 15% of air bookings were made from mobile, based on its sample of transactions from 1,000 global websites.
So it does appear that young folk are lagging behind the overall market when it comes to booking flights on their mobile.
But the WYSE study also found that general mobile usage among its sample is very high - as in, 43% of them use their phone every five minutes. Maybe the focus needs to be less on transactions and more on hanging out and having fun.
Else Globe is an app which has been designed to facilitate this. It uses location-based technology to put travellers in touch with like-minded people in the vicinity.
But its business model taps into the cant-leave-my-phone-alone mentality. Travel companies can white-label the app and then use it to send out relevant offers.
Nonetheless the WYSE report does have some other findings about millennials which are more on-message - 80% of respondents feel travel reviews have a real influence on their decisions, with 56% posting online reviews after a trip.
Arguably the key takeaway from the report is the scale of the market. The WYSE believes that by 2020 youth travellers will account for 320 million international trips a year.
The UNWTO Tourism Highlights 2014 says that the total market in that year will be 1.4 billion, meaning that in five year's time just under one-in-four international travellers will be aged between 18 and 30.
Whatever happened to the aging population?
NB Student travellers image by Shutterstock