HospitalityUnited.Club, a consortium of travel technology companies, has published an e-book titled ‘USA Travel Trends 2018’ highlighting key travel metrics and indicators in the region, in partnership with HRS Group, LiveOS, RateTiger and Sojern.
The e-book highlights the dominance of Expedia and Booking.com group companies in the USA online hotel booking space, controlling almost 95% of the OTA market.
The e-book shows that while traditional channels like voice, call center and tour operators are still preferred means of hotel reservations, growth of online booking is outpacing them by over 300%. Interestingly, unlike Europe, hotels are getting more online bookings through their brand website, indicating robust digital presence.
While metasearch remains strong as ever, Google has emerged as a serious channel, ranking first, when travellers look for pricing information. The search engine is also sending the most qualified leads to the hotel websites, even though, metasearch channels are dominated by OTAs.
The e-book also highlights that inspite of being one of the most matured online markets, one out of three people still feel uncomfortable booking hotels on mobile. This explains why mobile booking growth is lower in USA when compared to APAC.