One suspects that there are few in the travel industry that would be surprised to learn that online conversion rates are languishing in the 2-3% range.
Analysis of billions of travel transactions by Adobe found that the average look-to-book conversion rate for hospitality and travel-related products was 2.4%, just under the 2.6% that is the average for the retail sector as a whole.
The figures were for 2015 and include a comparison with smartphone conversions. Retail orders and bookings on smartphones are 0.9%, with travel and hospitality at 0.7%.
Analyst Luiz Maykot says:
"People are using their mobile phones more and more for booking travel, but there is still a lot of room in terms of making those experiences more meaningful, and to get consumers to cross the bridge between just browsing and actually finalizing their purchases."
Elsewhere in the analysis, Abode found that tablet bookings appear to have had their heyday for the time being.
Smartphone bookings have now reached almost 15% of the pie, with tablet bookings falling back to around 7.5% after reaching double figures for a period.
NB:Mobile travel image via Shutterstock.