OTAs are winning the battle for the customer
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are leading the competition when it comes to online engagement, particularly with regards to mobile traffic, according to new research from EyeforTravel and Jumpshot
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are leading the competition when it comes to online engagement, particularly with regards to mobile traffic, according to new research from EyeforTravel and Jumpshot.
Over the last 18 months, hotels and airlines have been on a drive to win customer loyalty, but EyeforTravel and Jumpshot's new Understanding the Travel Consumer's Path to Purchase white paper shows they still have a long way to go. According to both clickstream data gathered by Jumpshot from more than a quarter of a million travel purchases and EyeforTravel consumer surveys, OTAs are winning more bookings than travel suppliers, and by a noticeable margin.
In Germany, the UK and the US OTAs represent the largest vertical, taking a greater number of bookings than airline and accommodation brands. In the US, the paper compared clickstream data tracking purchases made on Booking.com, Expedia.com, Airbnb.com, Hotels.com, Delta, Southwest, United, Ryanair, Easyjet, Lufthansa, Emirates, Marriott, Hilton IHG and Wyndham. It found that OTAs were responsible for 42% of the bookings made in the period measured, against 39% for airlines and just 19% for hotel brands.
In the UK and Germany, consumer surveys of nearly 4,500 travellers presented in the paper revealed that OTAs controlled 46.5% and 47.1% of the bookings made on web browsers across all devices in the two countries.
Even when consumers finished their purchase on a hotel or airline site, they were more likely to have visited an OTA site along the way than a hotel or airline site. For example, 33% of German consumers who bought a flight through an airline also visited an OTA along the way but just 13% also went via a competitor airline brand.
Not only this but traffic is increasingly heading towards mobile, where OTAs are convincingly ahead. OTAs across the five countries studied – Brazil, Germany, India, the UK and US – all saw higher conversion rates than airline or hotel brands in the study. Alex Hadwick, Head of Research at EyeforTravel, emphasised how important this is going to be: "Mobile optimization is going to be critical for the survival of all travel brands. Firstly, mobile is in the ascendancy, becoming the primary means of travel research over the last year or so and this will increase as younger consumers, who are heavier mobile users anyway, become more prominent in travel consumption. Secondly, search engines are also becoming more mobile-focused in how they rank sites. This is especially important as 9 out of 10 consumers visit a search engine in the final 15 sites before purchase, according to this research."
EyeforTravel and Jumpshot tracked more than a quarter of a million travel purchasers across five countries through clickstream data and consumer surveys to build a picture of the path to purchase. The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.
To download the complete white paper and read all the research click here.
For more information contact [email protected] or call +44 207 422 4315
About Reuters Events
Reuters Events is a community where the world’s top online travel brands – from hotels to airlines, online travel agents, cruise, car hire firms and more – come to meet to drive forward growth and innovation in the industry.
We know that working in the turbulent online travel industry is as exciting as it is challenging. In this constantly evolving market place, we appreciate that keeping up with the pace of change can be tough, not to mention time consuming. You need the right information, contacts and strategic insight to succeed.
Established in 1997, by Tim Gunstone, we offer a diverse product portfolio including industry analysis, insights, research, webinars, reports and conferences to suit the needs of our clients.
Our clients read as a who’s who of online travel. From major hotel brands to new startups, we help our 80,000 strong customer base make better decisions, build better brands, close the most lucrative deals and ultimately sell more of their product. After all, increasing travel brand profit margins in the cutthroat travel industry is the name of the game!
No other online travel intelligence provider has been charting the growth of online travel as long as we have. We were here at the inception of online travel and we know the industry inside out. What’s more, we’re a small, friendly team. Forget impersonal hierarchies, we like to get to know our customers and work towards their exact needs.
