A survey carried out among Hong Kong travellers by market research company, GfK, showed that two thirds of purchasers of flight tickets (over 65%) use all three devices – PCs, tablets, smartphones – during the entire purchase journey.
The nine-week survey, between March to May 2014, polled more than 700 Hong Kong travel decision- makers intending to purchase air ticket in the next three months, who agreed to install GfK Nurago’s online tracking software on their digital and mobile devices.
Some key findings:
- The typical consumers spends almost five hours on research prior to actual booking, making an average of 92 visits to 22 travel related websites and apps before purchasing their bookings via the Internet.
- Offline travel service providers are still very much relevant as travellers showed strong omni-channel behaviours, navigating both online and offline platforms throughout the whole process. The majority of respondents (96%) used both both online and offline platforms throughout the whole booking process, with just 2% using either an online or offline platform exclusively.
- The most popular online sites used are search engines visited by 9 in 10 surveyed (91%), travel aggregator and information site (83%), travel booking (79%), airline company (69%) and social media (38%).
- Traditional mass media is the dominant offline touch point, with consumers relying on them for gathering travel information. Three quarters of the respondents (74%) were prompted to action after they saw an advertisement in a newspaper or magazine, 70% cited reading an article in these publications, and over half said their travel plans were sparked off by TV or radio,
Van den Oever: Important for industry to understand consumer purchase journey
Van den Oever, global travel director at GfK, said advertising in the mass media was an effective platform to garner intended travellers’ interest, as well as a good complementary channel to help them shift from offline to online.”
“It is especially important for industry players to understand the consumer purchase journey as they plan their trips so that travel service providers can more thoroughly understand the complexity of the process,” he added.
“This will ensure that they are effective in their offerings and present in the relevant phase of the journey, both online and off line, and from the planning stage right to the very end when purchase is eventually made.”
• Infographic below shows the various stages and touch points of the traveller’s flight purchase journey.
