Cleartrip is seeing levels of growth from mobile bookings for its hotel content which reinforces the importance of the channel for Indian consumers.
In the second edition of its Quarterly Insights, it reported a 90%+ increase in mobile transactions for hotels over the past quarter. Conversion rates are now "almost similar" to desktop rates, it added, getting to that level within nine months of launch.
Overall, mobile over the past quarter was its best ever across the key metrics of traffic, transactions and revenue - transactions grew 168% YoY and 69% QoQ (vs Q1 14). Mobile now pulls in 43% of overall traffic and accounts for 30% of transactions.
The report highlights the different patterns of use Indian travellers exhibit across devices, platforms and browsers.
For example, iOS users seem to be more focused on convenience, with a preference for Cleartrip's pay@hotel function. They like its “hotels near me” function and are more likely to access four-star/five-star filters before booking.
Android users are more utilitarian and concentrate on price and location.
But there is little difference when it comes to using photos as part of the research, with half of people across all platforms having a look at the pics of the hotel featured within the app.
Overall, its Android app is more popular than its iOS offer - 39% of all mobile traffic compared with 15% - but the most accessed channel remains its mobile-enabled web site with 46%.
Chrome is the most popular browser to access the mobile web (30%) followed by Andriod (24%) and Safari (16%).
If there is one standout finding, perhaps it is booking window:
The fact that more people are using mobile to book stays 30 days out than are booking within three days of the stay is a bit of a surprise. In the Indian market at least, this shows that mobile is mainstream and the focus on mobile's position as an "I need somewhere to stay, now!" channel might need rethinking.