Statistics are funny things - they can be twisted and turned for greater impact and when it comes to use of mobile in travel there are volumes of them.
As an example - it seems that 46% of smartphone owners would book an 'impulse' vacation based on a mobile alert/push notification.
Would you? Really?
When considering whether consumers might or not, you need to think about the demographic of the people and this Switchfly study was conducted among more than 2,000 American adults aged 18+, of who 67% own and use a smartphone.
We also need to consider the exact wording of the online study (which we don't have to hand) but the Switchfly study goes on to qualify it further - the 46% acting on impulse would book a trip if:
- It’s an amazing deal on a hotel and flight (31 percent)
- It’s perfect timing – they were already looking for a vacation (24 percent)
- It’s an all-inclusive deal (20 percent)
- They have a group of friends willing to go with them (15 percent)
- The destination is somewhere they’ve never been before (14 percent)
- They’re feeling spontaneous (14 percent)
If you take all those 'ifs' into account perhaps it would less of an impulse holiday.
This is not a dig at Switchfly just an interesting one to ponder and a reminder of the pinch of salt needed when digesting facts and figures.
Less staggering perhaps is the fact that 57% use their mobile phones to help plan a holiday - from researching destinations to booking flights and accommodation. Almost a third use devices for destination research, while 27% use them to storing boarding passes and other confirmation details and 18% use them to book accommodation.
This chimes in with another recent mobile study, from digital specialist Nucleus, revealing a 70% increase year-on-year in mobile transactions.
Traffic from mobiles as a percentage of the total increased from about 39% in January 2015 to almost 45% year-on-year - indicating a slow down in the share from mobile compared to two years ago when it stood at just over 27%.
The Nucleus research also highlights the ongoing dominance of ios with Android not making such headway. Apple devices make up the dominant share of mobile browsing at 77% versus Android's 19.5%. The figures compare to 80.7% and 16.6% in January 2014.
Google's plan to rank brands with an Android app higher in mobile search will be interesting to watch in terms of impact going forward.
There's lots more stats in the Switchfly research around who is booking and what they are booking such as 21% have used a mobile to book a hotel and more have used the device to book a cruise (35%) than a flight (13%) - that cruise one seems a little curious (Switchfly later clarified that it should actually be 3%).
It's the younger demographic, those aged 18 to 34 who tend to have used a mobile device to book something with almost half saying they have versus only 14% of those aged 65+.
It also highlights the apps and services most used while travelling with maps coming a first (45%), closely followed by social networks (42%), game apps (25%), news apps (20%), user review apps (18%), airline apps (17%), messaging apps (16%) - the list goes on.
The Switchfly Q1 Trend Report was conducted online by Harris Poll in February. The Nucleus Mobile Web Survey looked at 12 UK and international travel sites with a sample of 1.8 million in January 2015.
NB: On holiday with mobile image via Shutterstock.