It’s no secret that mobile is changing the way people research and book their travel online. Recently PhoCusWright found that by 2015 mobile travel bookings will make up over one quarter of the US online travel market, compared to 2% in 2011. Metasearch is also experiencing growth; the report noted a survey that found traveler preferences for metasearch sites increased from 28% in 2010 to 36% in 2013.

This change takes on a lot more meaning when you consider that preferences for OTA’s and search engines either remained the same or decreased in that same time period. Hotel suppliers who are able to correctly leverage these two high-growth channels in the coming years will be incredibly successful.

When are consumers booking on mobile?

We found an interesting trend when we dug into what days of the week users were booking on different device types on Google Hotel Price Ads. Desktop bookings peak on Monday, and trend down throughout the week to a steep drop on Saturday and Sunday. The opposite is true for mobile, with the lowest days being Sunday or Monday with a steady increase towards a peak on Saturday. We found this trend to be present among all of our clients, but it is more evident among economy and mid-scale brands.

We found that 59% of mobile bookings took place on Friday and Saturday, while 25% of desktop bookings were made on those days. One way a sharp marketer can capitalize on these insights would be conducting a test to adjust mobile bids up on Friday and Saturday to capture that valuable market share.  

Leisure vs. Business: Which device are consumers using?

The chart below shows the average stay length of bookings made on each device type. Mobile being the lowest average stay length makes a lot of sense for a few reasons. Common wisdom holds that mobile bookings are generally more spontaneous.

Tablet users had 16% and 32% higher average stay lengths than desktop and mobile users, respectively. The new era of online travel bookers don’t want to plan their vacations sitting in front of a desktop. They would rather do it on the couch or out by the pool. The mobility and larger screen retail of tablets make them the ideal tool for researching and booking deliberately planned leisure trips. Desktop bookings peaking on Mondays and tanking on the weekends indicates that desktop is still king for business travel.

Another dataset that gives great insight into leisure v.s. business travel is revenue per booking by device. You would expect it to fall in line with average stay length by device. The more days you’re booking, the more you should pay on average. However, the data tells a different story.

Although average stay length is 16% higher for tablet than desktop, desktop revenue per booking is 21% higher than tablet. The data clearly shows that tablet users have their own unique behavior. Today, the main metasearch publishers don’t support bid adjustment on a tablet level, but it’s something we hope to see the industry embrace.

Summing it up

There are clear trends across device types that can help advertisers maximize their return on each. Business travel continues to booked on desktop, planned leisure travel is trending towards tablets, and spontaneous weekend travel takes place on mobile. These trends will only become more clearly defined in the following years as consumers increase the number of devices they own. If you can understand user behavior on each device, and be intentional with the bids and the user experience, you can maximize your potential across each.

Sources-

Phocuswright: U.S. Online Travel Overview Report Thirteenth Edition

MarketRealist: A must-know overview of online travel leader The Priceline Group

Boston Consulting Group: Travel Goes Mobile

Skift Report: What’s Coming Next for Travel Metasearch

Koddi internal data