Gross travel bookings on mobile devices by U.S. customers will triple from $2.6 billion in 2011 to $8.1 billion in 2013, when they will account for almost 3% of all travel bookings, travel-research firm PhoCusWright reported in a study.
Mobile bookings will surge as the number of Americans owning either a smartphone that uses the Android operating system or a tablet computer surges over the next few years, PhoCusWright said. Mobile airline and mobile hotel bookings will accelerate at about the same pace, and, combined with car rental, will account for about 6.5% of the online travel market.
About 52% of the mobile bookings will be made directly through suppliers in 2015, while about 48% will be made through online travel agencies, PhoCusWright said.
Both leisure and business travelers said that finding hotels, restaurants and travel activities were the most popular functions they expected their smartphone to perform in the future, while getting flight alerts and receiving travel-discount offers were also popular functions.
As for mobile operating systems, Android, which had almost a quarter of the market in 2010, will have a 49% share in 2015, PhoCusWright said, citing tech-research firm Gartner.
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