An analysis of mobile travel bookings has underlined the rapid growth of business being done via handheld devices.

While mobile overall accounts for 23% of travel bookings globally, up from 12% last year, app bookings have risen sharply to account for 49% of mobile revenue for firms that are tracking advertising, up from just 12% a year ago.

A Criteo “Flash Report” into the travel mobile sector found a quarter of sales where the click is made on a mobile device are not being measured, that figure was 21% overall for clicks where the final transaction occurs on a different device to the original click.

Criteo’s country data reveals the UK is mid-table in the travel bookings league, with 22% of bookings on mobile, 9% on smartphone and 13% on tablet.

Japan and the US tops the table with 30% mobile bookings, with Sweden, Canada and Denmark making up the top five on 28%, 26% and 25% respectively.

Adoption of mobile for booking differs markedly between travel sectors, with apartment rentals leading the way on 31% followed by hotels (28%), car (25%) and packages (19%), surprisingly ahead of single component sales for air (17%) and rail (15%). Car rental is the fastest growing of the six sectors.

The Criteo study found mobile booking values, while increasingly challenging desktop for share are not keeping pace. In the UK tablet bookings are 92% of the value of desktop and smartphone just 57%.Among the leading markets just Italy sees higher values on mobile, with tablet booking values 101% the value of desktop.

Read full article at:  Travolution