Mobile continues to drive more bookings in travel, with one in five dollars now coming from the channel.
This is according to a new report from Adobe, called the Digital Index, which features a massive analysis of data, looking at over 15 billion visits to major U.S. travel, airline and hotel sites between 2013 and 2015.
The team also analyzed more than three million social media mentions and spoke with 1,000 US consumers to determine how the travel industry is faring with consumers.
Summer travel is pegged to be at $65 billion online on travel between Memorial Day and Labor Day, which comes in at 7% more than last year.
As far as the bookings coming in at 20% from mobile (smartphones and tablets), this number is up over 6% from the previous year.
Regarding this ongoing shift to mobile purchases, especially smartphones, Tamara Gaffney, principal at ADI says:
Because of the mobile-friendly nature of travel Web sites, we predict that this will be the first summer where purchases from phones surpass purchases from tablets in the travel industry.
Yet, after the purchase, many travelers are pursuing vacations away from the omni-presence of mobile phones. One in three are planning to visit destinations with limited-to-no access to Wi-Fi and other cell signals.
This means that marketers must re-think certain in-destination engagement strategies. Gaffney explains how this contradiction affects marketers:
Marketers may want to rethink their strategies, reducing the focus on tactics such mobile search. Our recommendation is that marketers fine-tune their social media strategies to place less of an emphasis on mobile.
The full report is embedded below.
NB: Financial desktop image courtesy Shutterstock.