A Google survey shows that U.S. mobile users opted to use browsers over mobile apps when they book travel.
For example, 52% of business travelers who booked hotels on their mobile devices did so through a browser while 21% booked overnight accommodations through their mobile apps, Google says.
For what Google terms "personal," or leisure, travelers, 52% of mobile bookers used browsers to book or reserve hotels while only 11% used mobile apps, according the survey.
The browse-over-mobile-apps pattern holds true for all travel categories, according to the survey, although the disparitybetween browser and app use narrows with ooking bvacation activities.
For example, 25% of business travelers who booked vacation activities on their mobile devices did so through a browser while 20% booked vacation activities through their mobile apps.
For personal travelers, 25% who booked vacation activities used browers on their mobile devices while only 10% used mobile apps, according the survey.
Does this mean app developers should packl it in and travel companies should focus exclusively on building better mobile websites?
Not necessarily.
The numbers may be skewed because not all hotels or vacation activity vendors have viable mobile apps, so in some cases opening up a browser may be the only or best option for some travel bookings from mobile devices.
On the other hand, a focus on mobile websites could make the browser option even more attractive.
How that plays out remains to be seen.
Gathering travel research is probably the most frequently used function on mobile devices in the travel planning and booking process, according to the survey.
The survey found, for example, 44% of business travelers and 31% of personal travelers planning cruises used their mobile devices to look for travel information about cruises; 18% of business-traveler and 9% of personal-traveler cruisers used their mobile devices to book or reserve cruises; and 21% of business-traveler and 8% of personal-traveler cruisers used their mobile devices to "check-in" for their cruises using location-based services such as Foursquare or Gowalla.
Another major finding in the Google survey, "The Traveler's Road to Decision," is that travelers are increasingly uploading videos of their trips.
In a previous survey, conducted in 2008, "only 4% of travelers reporting uploading a video from their past travels in the previous six months," Google says.
In the current survey, 9% of personal travelers uploaded travel video in the past 6 months in 2010 and 6% uploaded travel video in 2009.
For business travelers, 23% uploaded travel video in the past six months in 2010 and 16% did so in the prior two months in 2009, the survey found.
"As online video grows in popularity, not only more travelers are viewing them throughout the travel planning process, but they are uploading travel-related content as well," the survey says.
That means suppliers and intermediaries of all types should allocate some resources to develop or acquire video content.
That's not an earth-shattering conclusion, but the survey supports it.
To reach its findings about travelers' online behavior, Google's survey polled 5,000 U.S. online users who indicated they were business or personal travelers in the second quarter of 2010.