Poor Mobile Experiences Hurt Revenue and Loyalty

An independent study of smartphone and tablet-owning travelers published by Mobiquity crowned Travelocity and Hilton as the most popular brands for travel booking on a tablet, but also revealed that mobile design and performance issues are causing brands to miss out on their slice of the $25 billion forecasted for mobile travel bookings in 2014.

 

Mobiquity’s study found that 35 percent of connected travelers would be less likely to book again with a travel brand after a slow, confusing or non-optimized experience when researching or booking travel on a mobile device.  

 

“The Connected Traveler: Mobile Satisfaction Report” analyzed the experiences of 1,000 people who use smartphones and tablets to plan and book travel with 19 of the top travel brands. It found that consumers want to use their mobile devices for travel planning and booking, but that slow and poorly designed mobile apps and sites are impacting their experiences.

 

Consumers Have Good Mobile Intentions:

·       After researching travel on their tablets, 54 percent of tablet owners return to the Web to book, but 26 percent go on to use tablet sites to make bookings.

·       Tablets are the preferred device for planning future travel: 25 percent of connected travelers will use their tablet to research and book travel within the next month. 

·       39 percent of tablet owners and 33 percent of smartphone owners plan to spend more than $500 on travel bookings via mobile sites.

·       36 percent of tablet owners and 40 percent of smartphone owners plan to spend more than $500 on travel bookings via mobile apps.

·       76 percent of smartphone owners and 35 percent of tablet owners want to use their devices to book travel or hotel rooms when they are on the go and have an immediate need.

 

But Bad Mobile Experiences:

·       52 percent of tablet owners and 60 percent of smartphone owners complained that mobile travel sites were slow to load.

·       51 percent of tablet owners said that search and selection options on travel apps were complicated, and 44 percent reported that sites were not optimized for the tablet.

·       20 percent of tablet owners were disappointed that apps were not integrated with their loyalty programs, which meant they couldn’t access or redeem points/miles.

 

Top-performing Travel Brands for Tablet-Owning Travelers:

·       Travelocity came out on top for delivering the most satisfactory mobile experiences overall on the tablet, followed by Kayak for its tablet app and Marriott for its tablet site.

·       Hilton and Expedia were the brands most used for research on a tablet, while Hilton and Marriott scored highest for actual bookings via a tablet.