The global online travel market is growing and the dynamics are positive.
Despite a slowing growth rate, the online travel market is expanding worldwide and is projected to maintain continued positive dynamics at least through 2022. Nearly half of the world’s total travel sales are expected to be conducted online this year, with sales estimates for 2018 at over half a trillion dollars. The USA is the largest digital travel market worldwide, accounting for nearly one-third of global digital travel sales. The growth of online travel sales is mainly driven by younger travelers whose high service expectations, adoption of new technologies and tech-savvy skills set new trends on the online travel market.
One of the major trends influencing the global online travel market is M-Commerce.
Mobile is an inalienable part on all stages of travel purchase path for many travelers. In some emerging economies, such as Brazil or India, most travelers already feel comfortable researching, booking and planning their entire trips using only a mobile device. The travel categories with the largest shares of bookings from smartphones were car rentals and hotel bookings. The Middle East and Asia-Pacific are the leading regions for mobile travel booking adoption. For example, in China mobile has already become the leading channel for booking accommodations. Due to the convenience and ease of usage, mobile travel apps play an increasingly important role on the online travel market. Among the top accommodation booking apps are Booking.com, Trivago and Airbnb.
Sharing economy expands the online travel market.
One more trend is that travelers have shown higher level of trust towards peer-to-peer services, such as renting an alternative accommodation or transportation, rather than booking a hotel or hailing a taxi. Despite facing some legislation issues and cultural differences, global P2P brands, like Airbnb, continue to develop with a double-digit growth rate. Through 2022, North and Latin Americas are forecasted to become the main consumers of the sharing services with more than 50% of the global P2P platform provider revenue. Europe is projected to rank second and account for almost one-fifth share of global revenue. Furthermore, sales of the ride-hailing services, such as Uber and Lyft, are projected to grow almost 8 times by 2030 compared to 2017.
If you would like to see more details, check out the full report “Global Online Travel Market 2018”.
