How The Explosion In Travel Apps Makes It Easier To Reach A Valuable Demographic - Affluent Frequent Flyers

Today's smartphones and apps can give real-time transportation advice, locate you anywhere in the world, act as your boarding pass, book your dinner reservation, translate languages, and even help you find a cheap, last-minute hotel room.

That means that phone apps have become one of the best ways to target one of the most valuable consumer segments out there: air travelers. Recent research on mobile travelers has discovered particularities about their demographics and habits that make them quite desirable to brands and advertisers. For example, business travelers are more likely to actually book their travel on mobile (32% do so now), and consumers who use their mobile devices for travel-related services tend to have higher-than-average incomes.

In a recent report from BI Intelligence, we explore the market for mobile travel services, dive into travel-related mobile usage, analyze the data that explains why mobile travelers are attractive to brands and advertisers, and look at some of the barriers to growth in the mobile travel space, particularly the high cost of international data roaming.

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Here's a brief overview of the opportunity:

• One-third of mobile travelers earn over $100,000 annually. Twelve percent make over $150,000.
• A surprising proportion of these affluent mobile travelers, 71 percent, have downloaded a mobile app for loyalty or rewards programs they belong to.
• A Google study of the role of mobile and travel found that affluent travelers- those earning over $250,000 annually- are increasingly turning to mobile devices for trip planning and travel-related information.
• Advertising revenue will also flow to travel apps because they are able to ask for and collect location data from users.
• Many travel-related apps already have audiences in the millions.
• Some of the largest online travel companies already report a significant percentage of their bookings via mobile.
• Mobile remains strong for last-minute hotel bookings: Hotel Tonight leverages the last-minute nature of many mobile-mediated travel bookings, Orbitz noted that "over 70% of reservations coming through smartphones are being done within a day of check-in," and Expedia reported that 68% of its mobile hotel reservations are done within 24 hours of the planned stay. Mobile has clearly created a channel through which to sell rooms that otherwise would remain unoccupied and unsold.
• Tourism, of course, is one of the world's largest industries, responsible for some $6 trillion in direct and indirect economic impacts.

The report is full of charts and data that can be easily downloaded and put to use.

In full, the report:

• Explores the market for mobile travel services
• Looks at travel-related mobile usage
• Examines how mobile travelers are attractive to brands and advertisers
• Analyzes some of the barriers to growth in the mobile travel space, particularly the high cost of international data roaming

To access BI Intelligence's full report on The Mobile Tourist, sign up for a free trial subscription here.