Expedia Media Solutions has launched a new study by comScore, entitled, ‘The Traveler’s Path to Purchase‘, which identifies trends and behaviours of American, British and Canadian consumers along the 45-day digital journey leading up to a travel purchase.

But the research also dipped into Australian travel habits, and given the uncanny similarities between these countries and Australia, it gives us a strong insight into the thoughts and processes that travellers go through in the lead up to hitting the road.

With so many travel consumers undecided on their destination, most pursue time-consuming research. The sample search behaviour of a travel shopper, found in Figure 2, illustrates how bookers can keep multiple destinations in mind from beginning to end — even during the week of booking.

Accordingly, there is a significant opportunity for travel marketers to influence purchases, even for travellers who start the process with a pre-determined destination in mind.

Travelers from the UK, US and Canada consider wide-ranging destinations when planning a trip. American travellers are two times more likely to travel domestically, while bookers from the U.K. and Canada are two times more likely to set out for international destinations.

Canadian travellers conduct the most research, logging 161 visits to travel sites during the seven-week period. American shoppers follow with 140 visits on average, followed by 121 travel site visits for the average British traveller (see Figure 4).

As Figure 5 (below) shows, travel consumers across markets engage with content via online travel agencies (OTAs) more than any other resource during the 45 days leading up to a travel purchase.

For bookers in the U.S. and Canada, OTAs account for 33 per cent of share to online sites and 32 per cent for the U.K. Across all three markets, travel information sites (such as Tripadvisor.com and Nationalgeographic.com) play the second-largest role in terms of online resources. Travel information sites account for 26 per cent of site visits in Canada and 21 per cent in both the UK and US.

Given that OTAs have the most significant reach across these markets, they also have the strongest ability to influence destination decisions.

Looking at each of the three markets individually, U.K. travel shoppers identify friends and family as the most influential (18 per cent) when deciding where to go, followed by OTAs at 15 per cent and search engines at 11 per cent.

Not surprisingly, the top factor in destination selection across the three countries is cost, followed by hotel/accommodation options when deciding where to go.

Among digital users in the UK, 75 per cent consume travel content, spending an average of 2.4 billion minutes per month on travel content collectively. That represents a 44 per cent increase year over year.

Online travel advertising effectively reaches digital shoppers. Nearly half (47 per cent) of American travel bookers specifically recall travel advertising while researching or making a travel purchase.

Other key research findings included:

• Mobile trumps desktop for travel content consumption in the US and UK, at 75 per cent and 82 per cent on mobile respectively.
• Shoppers turn to online travel agencies (OTAs) and travel information sites most. Accounting for around one third of site visits for British, American and Canadian travellers, OTAs have the greatest share of visitation when looking at the booking journey as a whole. Travel information sites claim the second highest share across the board. These resources account for 21 per cent of site visits in the UK and US and 26 per cent in Canada.