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Travel News: Brits switch off on holiday
I love research that states the bleeding obvious, take this recent survey by travel company HolidayExtras.com. They found …
“The majority of Brits just want to get away from everything when they set off on holiday and prefer reading (48%) on the flight to any other activity.”
Despte the average online user spending just under five (4.6) hours a month on social networking sites,* HolidayExtras.com found the majority of Brits, 61 per cent, enjoy being completely out of touch and ‘offline’ on a flight.
This will not be welcoming news to the many airlines offering free WiFi to their customers, this month, in the misguided hope we will fall in love with tweeting, blogging and updating facebook as we fly. After the trail, the airlines hope they will have sucked us into wanting WiFi as we fly that we will happily pay yet another fee.
Travelling and social media
I obviously travel with the wrong people, as only six per cent of HolidayExtra.com customers use their, phone, laptop or other device, same goes for those on a business trip.
While social media may not play a huge role in their customers lives, it seems nearly everyone I know tweets, upload, download and post and using apps while travelling. Perhaps I know too many strange people, as another recent study, The Mobile Travel report, research by media agency Total Media, backed up the findings of HolidayExtra.
They found that:
Less than 10% of men and even fewer women use their mobile phones to update their Facebook and Twitter profiles once they are on holiday.
When asked what they would be interested in doing in the future on a mobile phone whilst on holiday, most were not interested in using Facebook or Twitter.
Instead people much prefer web services that connect them with other consumer recommendations and services that make their trip easier. Now that's me right there.
Travel planning
While the majority of travellers don't spend their precious travel time, bent over a mobile phone or laptop, updating their Facebook status and gossiping with their Twitter friends, others like yours truly use their phone for more practical purposes. Such as :
- checking flight times (around 18% of 16-to-24 year olds) and booking flights and hotels (15% of 16-34 year olds).
- applications that offer an insight into a destination: weather reports, how to ask for coffee, restaurant reviews are most used and desired (by more than 15 per cent of people in the 16-to-44 age profile).
Men are twice more likely than women to use mobile internet, be it searching for the best price or downloading a travel app.
There is a huge regional bias in using mobiles for travel planning, as Londoners are more likely to use their mobile phones to search for travel ideas (20 per cent) compared to less than two per cent in the North East.
The old ways are [usually] the best
Traditional forms of mobile communication, unsurprisingly, still lead when people plan their holiday; texting friends to ask their opinion (45% of 16-to-24-year olds) or phoning a friend for their opinion (42% of 25-to-34 year olds).
Also, mainly due to falling roaming fees and tariffs, women (60%) tend to send a text home, phone home (55%) and / or send a MMS (27% ) [compared to 47%, 50% and 24% for men respectively).
Picture: Holiday means not updating your social media status
Poll:
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On holiday, I use my mobile phone to:
- update my social media status
- send text
- send MMS i.e picture messages
- all of the above
- none of the above
About Total Media’s Mobile Travel Report: Based on online self completion surveys carried out by 1,375 consumers over 16 years and who have travelled in the last 12 months. The research was carried out by Lightspeed research UK.
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