The Asia Pacific region will account for more than 40% of global online travel sales by 2020, surpassing North America (27.6%) and Western Europe (20.2%) according to the report, Distribution of digital travel sales worldwide from 2014 to 2020, by region, by German online portal Statista.
Travel brands in the region thus have a big opportunity to introduce themselves or grow their presence. But how do they customise their campaigns and prioritise their budgets and resources to meet the varying consumer behaviour across the dreaming, planning and booking stages of their travel planning?
To provide the answer and help APAC travel companies improve their marketing, Google partnered with market research company Ipsos to find out how and why consumers choose certain service providers, platforms and devices in three of the region’s largest travel markets: India, Japan, and Australia.
The research found three insights and analysed what they mean to marketers. Here’s a summary.
1. Brand awareness varies from country to country
Consumers in India are the most brand-conscious, with 75% of them looking to book all of their travel through the same company. They also use an average of 4.1 OTAs throughout their travel planning journeys, the lowest of all three countries.
In Japan and Australia consumers are less brand loyal with 47% of them preferring to book from the same travel company. Japanese consumers use 4.2 OTAs on average, while Australian use 4.9.
2. Mobile experience preferences differ by country
Consumers in India, Japan, and Australia rely on their smartphones throughout their travel planning journeys. Travel apps are most popular in India, with 57% of consumers using them during the dreaming stage, 48% during the planning stage and about 70% to book trips. While 47% of Indians also use mobile web during their dreaming and planning stages, only about 20% use it for booking.
For the Japanese mobile web (35%) is more popular than apps (19%) during the planning stage although about 40% of them use apps and mobile web equally as they dream about their destinations. Australian consumers also use both apps (48%) and mobile web (33%) during their dreaming stages, but more of them turn to mobile web to plan (37%) compared to apps (26%).
3. Different countries spend varying amounts of time in each travel stage
The average length of consumers’ travel planning journeys differs from country to country. Indians have the shortest travel planning journeys among all three countries, spending only 0.6 months dreaming, 0.7 months planning and 0.8 months booking their trips. About 70% book their trips less than four weeks in advance.
Japanese consumers are eager to start planning once they decided where to go; about 70% spend less than two weeks planning before making the decision to book their trips. But they take longer to book, with 50% of travellers taking over a month (1.6) to reach a decision.
Australians have the longest travel planning journeys, spending 1.4 months dreaming, 1 month planning and 2.2 months booking their trips.
• Read the full report.
• Featured image credit: HAKINMHAN/Getty Images