British travellers now spend more time online before booking trips

By

Cajsa Lykke Carlson

Published
May 16, 2016

"The British Traveller’s Path to Purchase", a new study by Expedia, looked at how UK consumers behaved in the 45 days leading up to online travel booking.

It revealed that British travellers spend 2.4bn minutes engaging with digital travel content, an almost 45% increase year-on-year. Of those 2.4bn minutes, nearly 1bn are spent browsing travel content on a mobile device, an 82% increase year-on-year. 28m users now engage with travel content on mobile, compared with 25m who do so on desktops.

Nearly half of users who have a smartphone and 63% of tablet users used their devices for trip research. Most users (64%) still access travel information via browsers, rather than apps, and 68% of travel bookers cited an online source as the first resource used to help decide on a destination. Users average more than 18 visits to travel sites per week during the 45 days prior to booking, and in the week leading up to purchase they spend more than an hour and fifteen minutes on desktop travel sites.

The research also showed that British online travel bookers are twice as likely to book an international trip versus a domestic trip, and millennials were more likely to consider or book trips further abroad.

“Travel continues to be a complex buying decision, and one travellers invest a significant amount of time in, as illustrated by the number of travel site visits prior to booking,” said Noah Tratt, senior global vice president of Expedia Media Solutions.

“Considering that more than half of online travel bookers in the UK start with multiple destinations in mind, understanding how and when decisions are influenced throughout the path to purchase can help marketers better reach and engage British travellers in the weeks leading up to booking.”