NATIONAL REPORT—New research published by EyeforTravel and Jumpshot reveals OTAs are winning more bookings than travel suppliers.
In Germany, the U.K. and the U.S., OTAs represent the largest vertical, taking a greater number of bookings than airline and accommodation brands. In the U.S., the paper compared clickstream data tracking purchases made on Booking.com, Expedia.com, Airbnb.com, Hotels.com, Delta, Southwest, United, Ryanair, Easyjet, Lufthansa, Emirates, Marriott, Hilton IHG and Wyndham. It found that OTAs were responsible for 42% of the bookings made in the period measured, against 39% for airlines and just 19% for hotel brands.
In the U.K. and Germany, consumer surveys of nearly 4,500 travelers presented in the paper revealed that OTAs controlled 46.5% and 47.1% of the bookings made on web browsers across all devices in the two countries.
Even when consumers finished their purchase on a hotel or airline site, they were more likely to have visited an OTA site along the way than a hotel or airline site. For example, 33% of German consumers who bought a flight through an airline also visited an OTA along the way but just 13% also went via a competitor airline brand.
Not only this but traffic is increasingly heading towards mobile, where OTAs are convincingly ahead. OTAs across the five countries studied—Brazil, Germany, India, the UK and US—all saw higher conversion rates than airline or hotel brands in the study.
EyeforTravel and Jumpshot tracked more than a quarter of a million travel purchasers across five countries through clickstream data and consumer surveys to build a picture of the path to purchase. The white paper details the how, where and why of the decisions people make before they book, and identifies what travel brands should be doing to capture market share.