According to this post from Tnooz.com, 19% of all hotel queries are from mobiles, but only 1% actually make bookings via their phone. I read this post a week ago, but couldn’t get the statistics out of my head – what’s going on here, are we too far ahead of the curve with mobile?

Probably not.

The purchase process in travel isn’t the same as other e-commerce products; it’s confusing, sporadic and full of eccentricities. To develop a mobile strategy that includes transactions, it’s important to “get” the booking process and understand why a user would want book using their mobile in the first place.

According to the numbers I could find, women make 70% to 90% of the purchase decisions in travel bookings. That is a huge consideration for anyone in the industry, but even more so for mobile marketers. Not only do you need to get how women make bookings, but also how they use their mobiles in general.

The best breakdown I could find for female mobile usage came from Admob:

Smartphone ownership seems to be male-dominated, but Android takes the cake. Only 27% of Android users are female! Android’s branding does seem to be very male focused, something HTC appears to be aware of. I’m not sure if slapping a pink case on a phone will convince women to buy an Android, but HTC are going to give it a try. To be honest, the coat hanger ad seems a bit patronizing, but best of luck to them.

On the opposite end of the spectrum, an incredible portion of Blackberry users are women:

This actually surprised me; Blackberry always felt like a male dominated handset. I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear Blackberry, images of balding executives always spring to mind. This stereotype is not just totally inaccurate, but could be damning for a mobile strategy, especially one with limited budget.

Development for the Blackberry market always seems to happen after the iPhone, Android, web and Windows mobile apps have rolled off the shop floor, but why?

If women make 90% of the decisions in a booking and 70% of Blackberrys are owned by females, it makes sense to take Blackberry OS seriously. If you mix in the very realistic assumption that business travellers prefer Blackberry and are also more likely to book last minute, it makes the OS look quite attractive.

Mobile strategy and forecasting is not about what’s cool, its about knowing your demographic and keeping up to date with the an extremely fluid market. At first glance mobile looks like a race between iOS and Android, but it really depends on who you’re targeting and what works for your business. Research is key!

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