Small Luxury Hotels of the arena has revealed how significant the mobile economy is to the luxurious travel industry with its latest data on global browsing and booking trends through its website.
Tech gurus hyped 2012 because the year of the mobile boom and the newest figures from the posh hotel brand really highlight the growing ubiquity of handheld devices over 12 months by comparing visits and bookings at the site by iPad, iPhone and Android handsets.
The year on year analysis for SLH’s online activity for January, traditionally one of the vital popular booking months, not just reinforces the growing trend for mobile browsing and booking, but additionally underpins the growing demand for luxury travel inside the emerging markets, which saw the best percentage increase of traffic to slh.com.
In January 2013, SLH website hits in China were up by 406 per cent year on year; Brazil saw a rise of 104 per cent, followed by Russia with a more moderate 22 per cent increase.
The UK saw an incredibly positive increase, up 15 per cent, while in step with expectations other more developed travel markets along with america and Germany saw slight increases of 1 per cent and 4 per cent respectively, when compared with the identical month the former year.
In terms of website visits by mobile devices, the developed economies saw the foremost significant growth.
The iPad remains to be the most well liked handset for searching hotels on slh.com, with iPad visits from the united kingdom recording the most important share of total website visits at 22 per cent in January 2013, up 108 per cent year on year, followed by Canada (19 per cent), France (17 per cent) and Germany (16 per cent).
Website visits by iPhone were also marginally up year on year with the Canadian and Chinese markets both seeing essentially the mostsome of the most significant jump, recording a 193 per cent and 105 per cent increase in iPhone traffic to slh.com.
Android visits were also up in most markets, even though it still represents a terribly small proportion of the complete volume of website visits, suggesting there’s untapped potential for more mobile-friendly content.
The mobile technology market inside the UK continues to surge and accounts for an increasing amount of the complete online search volume for accommodation.
In January 2013, 30 per cent of visits to slh.com from the united kingdom were from a mobile device, when compared with 18 per cent in 2012, representing a 50 per cent increase year on year.
This data mirrors a nationwide technology trend for the travel industry consistent with the result of a Google UK survey revealing that in the third quarter of 2012, 33 per cent of all online searches for accommodation were from a mobile device, a pointy increase from a similar quarter in 2011 when mobile accounted for just five per cent of searches.
These results don’t come as much surprise on the grounds that the united kingdom has one of the vital highest penetrations of smartphones on the planet in step with Ofcom.
As of December 2012, 58 per cent of the population has a smartphone and almost a fifth (19 per cent) owns a tablet.
The iPhone is the most well liked device capturing 29 per cent of the united kingdom smartphone market.
Meanwhile, the share of website visitors making bookings on slh.com across all mobile platforms remains fairly low worldwide, although the conversion rate is growing.
Over 14 per cent of all bookings inside the last two quarters of 2012 were made by iPad, iPhone and Android, up from seven per cent around the same period in 2011.
China and Russia saw an extremely large increase in year on year bookings by iPad, with the iPad accounting for twenty-four per cent (in comparison to zero per cent in 2012) and 15 per cent (up 700 per cent) of total bookings respectively.
The steady rise of the iPad fan club within the UK continues with 18 per cent of SLH hotel stays booked via iPad in January 2013, up from seven per cent in January 2012.
The selection of bookings made by iPhone and Android remains very small, apart from the world’s leader in technology, Japan, where seven per cent of all bookings via slh.com were made by iPhone.
Could these technology champions be paving the way in which for smartphone luxury accommodation bookings within the future