Millennials Have No (Mobile) Fear

Before discussing Millennial behaviors, put yourself in their shoes. Millennials were born into a world with Apple and Play Stations, and spent their time after school instant messaging their friends and playing video games. Yes, these are Millennials and have seen technology evolving their entire lives. There is plentiful research on Millennials, the nation’s largest living generation, with a focus on comparing this tech-eccentric generation to previous generations. Our friends at Think With Google shared an interesting infographic recently that compared the mobile shopping and booking behaviors of Millennials to those over the age of 35. We’ve cherry picked the best information below for you but encourage you to view the infographic as well.

Key Findings from “Millennial Travelers: Mobile Shopping and Booking Behavior”:

• 27% of Millennial travelers say they have used a smartphone to shop for hotels versus 19% of people over 35 years old
• 66% of Millennial travelers are confident they can find the same flight and hotel information across devices, only 43% of people over 35 felt this way
• 64% of Millennial travelers say they typically book a hotel room on a smartphone after shopping on a smartphone, only 42% of people over 35 say the same

Our Takeaways:

Once we see technology trends from Millennials it is only a matter of time for these trends to extend to older generations. The trend of continuing to trust technology, no matter the size of screen, will permeate into other generations.

• The reliance of mobile phones will only increase, is your mobile website a good representation of your business? Will it allow users to go down the entire path to purchase easily? Your mobile site needs to download as fast as possible, but have all the information needed to book.
• The need for a seamless user experience across devices remains strong. The iPad and Fire are extremely popular and even though not as widely used as mobile phones, having a responsive website will pay dividends.
• People do book online with smartphones!