The travel industry talks a lot about mobile adoption, but when it comes time to make purchases, many consumers are still relying on older methods.
Adyen, a payments processor that handled Euro 50 billion in transactions in 2015, has been tracking the consumer adoption of mobile devices for transactions.
In an analysis of global transactions released today, only 13% of transactions for airlines were made from a mobile device in the first three months of 2016.
Accommodation verticals had only a 17% share of mobile payments in the first three months of 2016.
Travel's mobile-based volume -- averaging 15.5% of all transactions -- lagged the averages for other consumer retail categories, which had an average share of 32%.
It's not just a smartphone-screen-size issue. For the iPad specifically, the average transaction value (ATV) was $365 for accommodation services and $325 for airlines. Android tablets notched up $290 for accommodation and $266 for airlines. Those transaction volumes are up significantly from the $122 average transaction value via tablets in 2013, when Adyen did a similar survey. But they're below industry averages for how much consumers purchase in travel annually.
One catch: The study only had visibility into purchases via mobile browsers and not into ones via mobile apps.
The data comes from an analysis of Adyen’s customers across many regions, including Europe, the Americas (north, middle and south) and APAC.
Adyen, an Amsterdam-based company with 400 employees, processes transactions on behalf of many travel companies including AirBnb, Booking.com, and Uber. Adyen now has more than 30 airline customers, 10 of which signed last year, including easyJet, Vueling, Alitalia, Volaris, Aeromexico, GOL, and Cathay Pacific.
It said that companies investing in their mobile channels are seeing returns on that investment. Exhibit A: Dutch budget airline Transavia has been reporting a mobile browser-based payment share of 20% of all of its transaction volume.
The share of mobile payments in the industry travel amounts to 15.5% , which represents about half of the share of mobile payments overall (all industries included). So there is still hope that one of these years will definitely be "the year of mobile" for travel in particular. The Adyen report is available at this link.