If you're like most meeting professionals, you're glued to your smartphone because you use it for almost everything -- emailing and texting with team members, calling vendors, marketing your events via social media and, of course, checking the status of the many, many flights you take to destinations before, during and after your events.
But meeting planners don't just use their phones to monitor flights. A new study suggests many of them probably use their phones to book flights, too.
Published last week by travel management platform CWT, the survey asked 594 business travelers about their mobile booking behavior -- whether or not they book travel via smartphone apps -- and discovered that frequent travelers are more likely than infrequent travelers to purchase flights on their phones. Specifically, travelers who make more than five trips a year, as most meeting professionals do, are 13 percent more likely to book flights on their smartphone. Likewise, travelers who are revisiting a destination they've been to are 11 percent more likely to book via mobile app.
Other interesting findings:
• Business class travelers are more likely than economy travelers to book via smartphone: Bookings made on a smartphone are 15.8 percent more likely to be business class than bookings made on a computer, 15 percent more likely to be premium economy and 8.4 percent more likely to be first class.
• Travelers are more inclined to to book via smartphone if their trip is soon: Some 62 percent of mobile bookings are made between one day and one week prior to departure, but only 28 percent of computer bookings are done during that time.
• Bookings made at home are more likely to be mobile: Although 73.5 percent of travelers book their flights at the office, regardless of channel, travelers who book their flights at home are 12 percent more likely to book on mobile than those who book their flights at the office.
"The findings are clear: The more you travel, the more you use your smartphone, and that includes booking your flights directly through an app," said Amit Wurgaft, CWT's chief experience officer in charge of digital. "Booking on your mobile device requires a level of confidence, born from experience. This is also why travelers are more likely to book on mobile when they have visited the destination in the past."