Each day a new report is published regarding the increase of mobile devices’ share on online bookings. Share of mobile bookings has already caught up with the Web, the most preferred means of booking for the countries with developed tourism industry and high value creation. The popularity of Smartphones and the increase in the number of websites compatible with such devices stand out as the factors that have the biggest impact on this rapid growth.
TripAdvisor, which is the biggest travel website of the world, is one of the most evident examples for that. According to the latest figures, Smartphones and tablets constitute one-third of the Internet traffic on TripAdvisor today. This figure indicates that a monthly average of 80 million visitors use TripAdvisor through mobile devices.
Figures on other leading actors are equally impressive.
Guests considering accommodation alternatives make use of mobile devices even more now, which calls for a drastic change for all the actors within the industry. Those who cannot adapt to this change will fail to retain the competitive advantage in the long term. On the other hand, all kinds of properties and online travel agencies that are aware of this development keep investing in mobile devices.
40 % of all bookings on Ctrip come from mobile devices
Another example along with TripAdvisor is Ctrip, the largest online travel agency of China. Adapting itself to the growth of mobile devices, Ctrip offers the option of using mobile devices to check and book rooms from more than 280 thousand hotels in the world. Ctrip has announced that 40 per cent of the total of hotel bookings come from mobile channels.
The Expedia-owned travel site eLong is among those that are shifting their marketing focus to “mobile devices”. The company estimates that one-fourth of total bookings will be achieved through mobile devices in the upcoming periods. Within the scope of its mobile-oriented strategies, the company has decided to allocate a fund of 100 billion dollars in total for creating and promoting mobile device-based traveling products and services, which is the evidence of the huge potential the company sees in mobile realm.
Travel.jp and Hotel.jp in Japan, which is one of the largest tourist exporters, have tripled their volume of mobile-based traffic in the last year, as announced by VentureRepublic, the owner of these two websites. This constitutes more than 40 per cent of the total traffic.
“If you don’t have a mobile strategy…”
The most influential quote on the importance of mobile devices in our era is probably by Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt: “If you don’t have a mobile strategy, you don’t have a future strategy.”
The giant online travel agencies mentioned above are just a few of those that have realized mobile devices have become too important to ignore today and made a quick shift from the Web to mobile devices. This is the case not only for OTAs, but also for companies of all sizes that are engaged in the accommodation industry. If you also would like to take your part in the fast-growing market of mobile devices, just create your HotelRunner account and enjoy the option of online bookings and sales both through mobile devices and other devices.
