Google Barometer shows majority of flight bookings are direct

Google Barometer shows majority of flight bookings are direct

Google’s latest consumer insight tool shows most people are buying their flights direct from the airline when booking a holiday online.

Google’s latest consumer insight tool shows most people are buying their flights direct from the airline when booking a holiday online.

The Consumer Barometer 2015 is free to use, it features data from two Google studies collected from more than 400,000 respondents across 56 countries, to provide insights into people’s online activity.

The barometer has been updated with the latest version released today.

This year, 20 vertical sectors have been profiled, with specific data on flights and hotels included.

Insights include that 71% of UK consumers research and purchase flights only online; four out of five people purchase their hotel stay online and 81% of people research online before booking a hotel.

The Consumer Barometer also shows where people purchase from, and has found that for the UK, airline websites beat price comparison sites when it comes to booking a trip, with 58% of consumers buying directly from an airline compared to 18% on comparison sites.

More generally, the research has found that across sectors British consumers continue to lead Europe in mobile technology adoption, with 71% of people owning a smartphone compared to the European average of 61%, and 60% using search engines via their smartphone at least once a week.

The barometer has also found offline shopping still outstrips online shopping in the UK – but only just.

Today, 59% of Britons research products online before they purchase offline and this compares to 49% researching offline before making a purchase online. A quarter of Brits research their purchases online only.

Peter Cory, agency sales director at Google, said: “Consumer habits are changing fast, making it challenging for brands to understand and predict how and when it’s best to reach them.

“In the UK alone, we’ve seen significant increases in the number of devices owned and that’s having a direct effect on the way consumers conduct their day-to-day lives – how they consume media, how they research products and how, when and where they buy.”

Google created the Consumer Barometer to provide marketers with the latest consumer insights to support planning, but anyone can use the free tool to create and download customised data and market-specific information.

New vertical sectors will be added on an ongoing basis as Google extends the insights.