Shopping Cart Abandonment is Still an Issue in Online Travel

This is an excerpt from our FREE quarterly trends series, The Habits of Travel Bookers, brought to you in partnership with Boxever.

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Shopping cart abandonment is a major issue across online travel. By and large, too much money is being left on the table. How much? In 2014, Boxever estimated that nearly $1.78 trillion dollars are left floating around as purchases not yet completed by would-be travelers. That’s more than three times the amount that travel companies are actually raking in ($446 billion).

Note that $1.78 trillion isn’t actually what would have been spent– people aren’t actually planning on buying five trips from five sites. The question to ask is: How can my site make the customer convert?

In terms of abandoned cart rates, the travel industry as a whole suffers from 81% abandoned cart rates, according to Econsultancy, compared to just 68% across other online retail.

Online travel agencies (OTAs) see the worse abandoned cart rates at 89%, followed by the airlines industry at 79%. Hotels, cruises and car rentals aren’t doing much better – floating around just under 70% abandonment rates.

Over a quarter of online travel shoppers add their order to the basket, more than three times higher than the seven percent across re- tail. But, between the basket and the checkout, there is a staggering 20% drop off. In total, just .58% actually confirm their travel purchase. [Read More]

Last month, we launched a new quarterly trends series, The Habits of Travel Bookers, brought to you in partnership with Boxever. Above was an extract from it. You can download the full report here for all the insights.
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