Do You Use Your Smart Phone to Book Hotels?

The Global Business Travel Association in conjunction with Carlson Wagonlit Travel conducted a survey with over 500 North American business travelers to find out how they make hotel bookings for business trips.

To start off with, here’s the criteria that surveyed business travelers use when booking hotels online, according to the study.

Here are some more stats from the study, titled “Booking Behaviors: Helping Business travelers Booking Smarter” –

In the past 6 months, the surveyed business travelers said they booked hotels –

39% via smart phone
58% via laptop
43% via desktop
25% via tablet

47% have used two or more device types.

The numbers are not surprising to me as I typically find booking via laptop is convenient while traveling or at home. Most phone apps I find a bit too clunky for my taste, and I rarely reach for my iPad. Last night I was trying to book a Hyatt property on my phone’s Hyatt app and got as far as the payment page, scrolled as far down as possible, but there was no submit button.

According to the study, tech-savvy Millennials tend to talk with travel agents or hotel reps before booking while older travelers communicate less with others first.

This seems about right to me since Millennials have less experience and may have more questions or look to others for clarification first.

Just about everyone has a smart phone, but not everyone uses travel apps.

Here’s a chart from the study on who has what on their phone –

Less than half of all business travelers have downloaded any travel apps at all.

How about you, do you use travel apps on your phone? Book hotels via your smart phone?