Mobile Commerce's Growing Opportunities for Travel: Latest Skift Research


Skift Take

Mobile is already the primary device for travel planning in the majority of the world. Still, mobile bookings are yet to surpass desktop bookings in volume or value. Undoubtedly, travel companies need to increase mobile investments while also deploying an overarching multi-device strategy to engage customers throughout.

In the past few years, mobile commerce sales have amplified tremendously across all consumer product categories. Over 2017–2021, global retail mobile-commerce sales grew from $1.4 trillion to $3.6 trillion. Based on our analysis of available third-party data and our own estimates of the accommodation and airline sectors, we believe mobile travel sales account for about 30-40 percent of online travel sales and 15-25 percent of total travel sales globally. 


While there is consensus that mobile accounts for a significant share of travel revenues and its share will continue to grow in the next few years, there is still a lack of industry-level estimates as to how big the travel mobile commerce market is. In Skift Research’s newly released Mobile Commerce in Travel: A Global Perspective report we attempted to fill the gap and estimate the size of mobile commerce globally as well as understand the regional variations in mobile commerce penetration in the travel industry. We focus on two travel sectors – hotels and flights – in North America, APAC, and Europe.

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What You’ll Learn From This Report

  • Mobile commerce sales and growth at a global level  
  • Share of hotel bookings by channel and device, breaking down by top countries and region 
  • Revenue share of mobile in online flight bookings by region
  • Regional mobile usage behaviors and patterns that impact mobile bookings 
  • Other key factors that impact how and when mobile is used for booking
  • Change in device usage patterns in light of Covid-19 
  • Challenges and opportunities of growing mobile channels

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