2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report
Get insights to deliver better, more human digital experiences.
5 Actionable Insights Into Digital Consumer Behavior in the Travel and Hospitality Industry
- “What is the average bounce rate for the travel and hospitality industry? Is my conversion rate too low? What channels are driving the most traffic?”
- 1. 60% of traffic to travel and hospitality sites is mobile
- 2. Travelers spend 2x as much time researching on desktop
- 3. Travelers are impatient, so don’t waste their time!
- 4. Bounce rates are still high for travel and tourism brands at 42%
- 5. The average conversion rate is 3.9% in the travel and hospitality industry
- Dive deeper into your travelers' digital behavior with Contentsquare
“What is the average bounce rate for the travel and hospitality industry? Is my conversion rate too low? What channels are driving the most traffic?”
The travel and hospitality industry is slowly but surely bouncing back, with performance improving considerably in recent months. With the summer season fast approaching, now is the perfect time to level up your digital experience in preparation for customers who are excited to plan their next vacation.
To do that, you need the latest data on travel industry trends and insight into digital customer behavior. So, we’ve gathered the top five findings from our 2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report to help you prepare your digital strategy for success.
Get my copy
1. 60% of traffic to travel and hospitality sites is mobile
Mobile traffic to travel and hospitality sites is booming! We found mobile was the device of choice for many travel customers, accounting for 60% of online traffic in 2021—that’s a 7% increase from 2020. Clearly, travelers are happy to browse for holidays and experiences on their smartphones.
– Traffic Source (YoY)
| Desktop 2020 | Desktop 2021 | Mobile 2020 | Mobile 2021 | Tablet 2020 | Tablet 2021 |
| 41% | 38% | 56% | 60% | 3% | 2% |
What does this mean for travel and tourism brands?
In order to win customers, travel brands need to ensure their mobile experience is smooth and logical by using data-driven insights to optimize their mobile sites and apps. Only by understanding your mobile journey and your customer segments can you streamline your travel site’s UX to increase conversion rate and revenue.
Take it from the pros: By leveraging user experience insights to optimize its mobile booking experience, a leading hotelier gained a $95k increase in yearly revenue. Now that’s impressive! To find out what they did to get such incredible results, download the report today.
2. Travelers spend 2x as much time researching on desktop
Although mobile traffic is on the rise, when it comes to time spent browsing, we found users are more likely to spend longer browsing on desktop (6 minutes and 59 seconds) compared with mobile (3 minutes and 30 seconds). This indicates that mobile users prefer it short and snappy, while desktop users are willing to spend more time looking for their next adventure.
– Average Time Spent per Session by Device
| Device Type | Avg. Time Spent per Session |
| Desktop | 0:06:59 |
| Mobile | 0:03:30 |
What does this mean for travel brands?
The customer experience (CX) between mobile and desktop visits should be different to achieve optimal results for each audience. So, consider building unique journeys tailored to meet the expectations of both casual mobile browsing sessions and analytical desktop sessions.
3. Travelers are impatient, so don’t waste their time!
Today’s traveler wants quick answers and expects immediate results—if their experience on your site is too slow, they’re likely to get frustrated and go elsewhere. In fact, the likelihood of a user bouncing increases by 32% between the first 1 and 3 seconds.
What does this mean for travel and tourism brands?
If there’s one thing you should prioritize this year to improve your site experience and increase customer satisfaction, it’s getting your loading times as low as they can go. At a minimum, travel brands should aim to nail all of their Core Web Vital scores.
Using site performance tools, like Contentsquare’s Speed Analysis, can help you benchmark where your site is today, plus surface and rank core issues to help you prioritize your roadmap and improve your site speed.
4. Bounce rates are still high for travel and tourism brands at 42%
42% of travel website visitors abandon their journey after viewing just one page. This is down—though only very slightly–from 43% in 2020. With just under half of users bouncing after viewing just one page, there’s plenty of work to be done by travel brands to create seamless digital experiences that entice customers enough to stick around.
– Average Bounce Rate (YoY)
| 2020 Avg. Bounce Rate | 2021 Avg. Bounce Rate |
| 43% | 42% |
What does this mean for travel brands?
Alongside bounce rate metrics, travel brands should consider analyzing the scroll rate and content engagement patterns for bounced visitors to help them further refine high-traffic landing pages to ensure visitors are finding content that is relevant, engaging, and useful. This will help to reduce bounce rates and increase the number of journeys that result in bookings.
And to really understand why users are bouncing, travel brands need more insights than their typical analytics tools can provide. That’s why in our 2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report, we’ve gathered four key tools you should be using to better understand and improve your bounce rate.
5. The average conversion rate is 3.9% in the travel and hospitality industry
According to our data, the average conversion rate is 3.9% for the travel and hospitality industry—that’s a 63% increase YoY!
– Average Conversion Rate (YoY)
| 2020 | 2021 |
| 2.4% | 3.9% |
This suggests that travel brands have spent time optimizing their customer journeys to increase the number of people taking the desired action on their sites. Although, this big YoY increase in conversions comes as little surprise given not many people were traveling around the world in 2020 due to COVD-19 restrictions.
What does this mean for travel brands?
Analyzing your conversion rate against industry benchmarks can help give you an accurate picture of your performance against your peers and/or industry trends. In our 2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report, we share four ways you can optimize your payment process to increase bookings and improve your conversion rate.
Dive deeper into your travelers’ digital behavior with Contentsquare
At Contentsquare, we empower digital teams with invaluable insights into their customer experience. From best practice guidelines and expert analysis to case studies and our favorite quick wins, our 2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report will leave you with actionable insights to build, refine, and optimize your online experience to best respond to your travel customer’s needs. Download the report today.
2022 Travel Digital Experience Benchmark Report Get insights to deliver better, more human digital experiences.
Get my copy
