Holidaymakers are showing very little interest in travel apps on their smartphones, according to the latest research by Phocuswright.
The travel market research firm Phocuswright found that those planning on travelling to Europe for fun-filled holidays lack interest in travel apps with their study of 1,000 European holidaymakers showing only “light” use of such services.
Phocuswright’s Consumer Research Director, Marcello Gasdia, explained that the results of app usage were not as high as they had originally expected.
Uptake of travel apps is ‘light’
App use made up two thirds of recipients’ mobile activity with the average user opening 25 apps a day and spending up to two hours and six minutes with an app running in the background of their smartphone.
Commenting at the ITB (Internationale Tourismus-Börse Berlin)tradeshow in Berlin, Gasdia said:
“Two-thirds of the app time was spent on email, social media and gaming. The uptake of travel apps was light.”
The study also found that travel apps took up around 1% of the time travellers spent on their smartphones while the use of mobile web browsers for travel searches was a great deal higher.
Gasdia noted that this suggests travel apps are falling behind the general mobile web trend.
Web over app
Of the travel apps which were used by holidaymakers, TripAdvisor was by far the most popular with 13% of travellers visiting the website via an app and 18% accessing it via their mobile internet.
Only 38% of TripAdvisor’s total website traffic came from their online app while overall results showed similar trends for travel agencies as 11% of tourists accessed these services via an app while 19% chose to use the web.
Airline apps which allow travellers to check in or track their flight times proved to be the most frequently used overall – outperforming other types of travel app considerably.
If you’re planning on travelling abroad, it’s important to ensure you have European travel insurance in advance.
Date Created: 06/03/2015
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