Survey reveals sharp rise in hotel bookings made using smartphones and tablets

HRS, Europe’s leading hotel portal, has noted a sharp increase in hotel bookings made using smartphones and tablets over the past two years. On average one in three people have now booked a hotel room at least once with a mobile device, and a further 25 percent would be willing to try making a hotel booking on the move using their mobile phone, smartphone or tablet. This information comes from an eResult survey commissioned by HRS.

These numbers are significant when compared to a similar survey made two years ago, when only one in five people said they had booked a hotel room using a mobile device.

The current trends show that business travellers are more likely to use a mobile device to book a hotel than private travellers. According to the survey, half of business travellers have already booked using a mobile device, and one in four are planning to do so shortly. This is again a clear rise since 2011. Two years ago, around 30 percent of business travellers booked using a mobile device and around 20 percent were intending to do so.

However, the trend in mobile bookings is moving further into the realm of private travellers as approximately one in three of those surveyed have already booked a hotel room for a short break or similar using a mobile device and more than a quarter are intending to do so shortly. In contrast, only 18.4 percent made mobile bookings in 2011 and only around one in 10 intended to use a smartphone or similar device to make a booking in the near future.

“Today’s travellers rely on apps because they reduce the process to the essentials – a quick and simple search, booking in only two steps and well thought-out extra services such as booking management in Apple Passbook or practical reminder functions. That’s also the recipe for success for our HRS app, which has been downloaded over 10 million times,” says Björn Krämer, Director of Mobile & New Media at HRS.

In further statistics gleaned from the survey, men were slightly more inclined to make hotel bookings on a mobile device than women. Almost 34 percent of the men surveyed have booked a hotel using a smartphone or similar device, while slightly fewer women did so (approx. 27 percent), although this is still one in four.