Jiwire: Travel product research: Mobile is as important as PC

Mobile and PC are equally important for travel information search

According to Jiwire, laptops and mobile devices are used almost as much when it comes to planning the next holiday and business trip. But when it comes to actual purchases, laptops still lead by a wide margin.

The survey found that 56% of travelers use laptops to research their travel plans, compared to 49% on tablets and 48% on smartphones, highlighting the importance of travel agencies and hotels offering mobile-optimized sites or apps.

When purchasing during travel, PC is still the most popular, while mobile purchases are growing rapidly

Although the proportion of users using mobile terminals to browse travel information is so high, handheld devices are still a little inconvenient. 63% of users complete travel purchases on computers, while only 39% and 27% of users have purchased travel products on tablets or smartphones respectively.

But this data is much better than in the past. In 2011, Tealeaf's survey found that only 17% of users researched travel products on their mobile phones, and only 3% made reservations through their mobile phones at that time.

Which devices do you use to research and make travel purchases?

Users are willing to spend a lot of money on mobile phones

44% of respondents said they would be willing to purchase travel-related products worth more than $500 via their mobile phones or tablets, while on the other hand, only 13% of users said they would not purchase travel products on mobile terminals.

How much are you willing to spend on travel when making a purchase with your smartphone or tablet?

App or mobile site

The survey also found the importance of mobile apps to the travel industry. When it comes to travel bookings, travel aggregators and airline apps are far more popular than mobile sites. Of course, this does not mean that mobile sites are not important. Affiliate Window compared travel sites with mobile versions and desktop-only sites and found that the conversion rate of the former was 5.8%, while the latter was only 0.8%.

If you book travel on your smartphone or tablet which of the following is most important?

via: 199it compiled by @econsultancy