European OTA eDreams Odigeo says that mobile is now a bigger source of traffic than desktop in the UK and Italy, with the gap closing in almost all the markets it operates in.
It found that Italy is the fastest growing mobile market and has reached the tipping point thanks to a 25% year-on-year increase. Other countries seeing strong growth are Germany, up 24% , Spain up 18% and Portugal up 11%.
France is a notable exception with eDreams seeing mobile traffic drop by 1% during the year.
The shift towards users searching via mobile has not yet transitioned to booking. eDreams claims that 30% of its flight bookings in the last three months of 2016 were made via mobile, ahead of the industry average of 21% which comes from Phocuswright data.
It also revealed the extent to which mobile is used for last-minute bookings. Over half (52%) of the mobile hotel bookings are within seven days of arrival while 40% of the mobile bookings for flights occurring in the same timeframe.
By country, French travellers are the most active last-minute mobile bookers.
Elsewhere, the study says that 93% of its customers who have downloaded the app and created an account use its flight notification service.
Click here to access the report.
The mobile report came out at the same time as eDreams Odigeo released its latest financials. In the nine months to end-Dec16, booking volumes across the business were up by 9% on the same period last year, leading to a 5% increase in what it describes as revenue margin to €350 million and an adjusted EBITDA up 18% to €76 million.