Nearly 40 million US consumers accessed travel sites or apps from their smartphone in July 2012, reaching 37% of the smartphone population, according to comScore's findings into US smartphone travel behaviours based on data from its
comScore Mobile Metrix 2.0 service.
TripAdvisor Media Group led as the largest travel property with a smartphone audience of 6.7 million visitors, followed by Expedia Inc. with 6 million visitors and Southwest Airlines with 4.1 million visitors.
A demographic analysis revealed that women had a higher tendency than men to access OTA (Online Travel Agent) destinations on their smartphones, with Travelocity and Orbitz displaying the strongest gender skews among OTAs. Compared to the total travel category, females represented 14% more visitors to Expedia Inc., 12% more visitors to Kayak.com, and 22% more for Orbitz. The most evident gender difference among OTAs was demonstrated by Travelocity where 65.9% of the brand's smartphone audience was female. Priceline was the only OTA among the top 15 properties where men accounted for the majority of visitors at 53.4%.
Analysis of the share of time spent across apps and browsers revealed that travel category engagement was more evenly distributed among browser and app access when compared to the total internet distribution. In July, 53% of minutes spent on Travel category content originated from apps, with browsers accounting for 47% of minutes. In contrast, 83% of all mobile content was consumed via apps with only 17% being accounted for by browser usage.
Among top airline sites and apps, males accounted for nearly 3 in 4 visitors to Delta Airlines, while Southwest Airlines saw females account for 3 in 5 visitors. Hotel brands also saw men and women engage differently. InterContinental Hotels Groups and Wyndham Worldwide saw women account for the majority of smartphone visitors, while Hilton saw men represent 66.8% of its smartphone audience. Among top hotel brands, Marriot saw the most even distribution of its audience between males and females.
