Mobile user acquisition solution YouAppi found that travel app downloads vary by region and season. Summer, though high season for many destinations, isn’t the peak season in the US and Asia.
SAN FRANCISCO – YouAppi, a pioneer in data-driven mobile customer acquisition, has found that there is a tremendous variance in the download of travel apps according to country, region and season. This data is based on campaigns for 45 leading international travel apps running in 62 countries including Expedia, Hotels.com, Lyft, Gett, Yandex Taxi.
Summer may be high season for travel but it's not the high season for app downloads in the US and Asia, according to research from YouAppi. In the US, travel app downloads peak in November – January, while in Asia, travel app downloads peak between September – November. Only in Europe do travel app downloads actual peak in the summer – June, July and August.
There are a number of reasons explaining this data. First, according to the Department of Transportation, in the US, the Thanksgiving and Christmas/New Year's holiday period are among the busiest long-distance travel periods of the year. The Chinese New Year, an important holiday for traveling, undoubtedly contributed to the surge in travel app usage in November in Asia. Second, though summer is the peak traveling season, most trips are planned in advance and travel apps have been enhancing their functionality and usability in order to make them indispensable to travelers year-round. Among Americans, the winter months are also peak seasons for travel to southern destinations like Florida and the Caribbean.
Beyond this, companies in the travel industry are migrating communications and marketing to mobile apps. Uber is shifting customer service from email to in-app communications while Dutch airline KLM announced that customers can now receive flight confirmations, boarding cards, reminders, flight status updates, and customer service directly through the Facebook Messenger app.
The trend to mobile is supported by data from retargeter Criteo which found that 20-30% of travel bookings in 2015 were transacted via a mobile device. And for same-day hotel bookings, the percentage transacted via a mobile device climbs to 58%. Beyond browsing, mobile app conversion rates average 13% for travel apps, greater than the 11% conversion rate on desktop for travel websites.
With frequency of usage a key criterion for app success, travel app marketers have understood that their apps need to be used monthly if not weekly, year round. Therefore, travel app marketers have been marketing their apps throughout the year with year round content to generate continuous usage.
The only exception to the data presented was found in France, where travel app downloads peaked in December and were more evenly distributed throughout the year.
This data is based on hundreds of thousands of Travel App downloads in 62 countries for leading travel apps managed by YouAppi's teams in San Francisco and New York in the US, and in China, India, Israel, Singapore, Germany and the UK.
"With travel apps seeking to emulate the most successful and used apps – like Facebook, YouTube, Google Search and Pandora – which are used on a regular and continuous basis, we're seeing travel apps broadening their range of content and offers and marketing their apps for year-round usage," said Eyal Hilzenrat, YouAppi's VP Products & Partnerships.
Since 2012, YouAppi has been combining the power of machine learning with proprietary predictive algorithms, enabling the world's leading apps to find the right customers at the right conversion price across countries and verticals, based on post-install event analytics. The company's OneRun Platform conducts real-time multi variant analysis to understand the KPIs for each app. This is facilitated by the ongoing management of campaigns that deliver mobile app recommendations while analyzing over 250 terabytes of data daily. YouAppi drives customer acquisition via 15,000 campaigns for 450 leading advertisers, offering one single point to streamline mobile media buying.
Tatiana is the news coordinator for TravelDailyNews Media Network (traveldailynews.gr, traveldailynews.com and traveldailynews.asia). Her role includes monitoring the hundreds of news sources of TravelDailyNews Media Network and skimming the most important according to our strategy.
She holds a Bachelor's degree in Communication & Mass Media from Panteion University of Political & Social Studies of Athens and she has been editor and editor-in-chief in various economic magazines and newspapers.
