Travel Trends: Micro-Moments & Mobile Booking

As the summer travel season gets underway, a growing number of Americans will use a smartphone to plan their vacation. This mobile behavior has created a new consumer journey in the travel industry. Travelers face an incredible number of decisions in the process of planning a trip, and they are turning to their smartphones for immediate answers to their travel questions. Google calls these instances micro-moments: intent-rich moments when someone acts on a need. These micro-moments happen throughout the traveler’s journey. They start when someone begins dreaming of the trip, and continue throughout planning, booking, and traveling. When these micro-moments happen, the consumer reaches for the device nearest them, typically their smartphone, in search of immediate access to information - instant gratification. In the past year, the number of consumer visits to mobile travel sites has grown by 48%. Interestingly, because smartphones help people find information more quickly, time spent per session on mobile travel sites is actually down, even though conversion rates have grown by 88%. Also, more consumers are staying on smartphones to book, instead of switching to another device. In 2017, after researching on their smartphone, 79% of travelers completed a booking on that same device. Larger smartphone screens, easier mobile payment methods, and last-minute travel deals are also helping to drive this mobile booking trend. For impulse trips, those booking within 24 hours of check in, nearly 90% are booked on mobile devices. In order to continue to capture these mobile bookers, we are committed to making sure the itripvacations mobile booking site offers a superior user experience, including a simplified browsing and booking process. We’ll continue to look for more ways to capitalize on this trend.