Mobile travel trends - statistics & facts

Between the mid-1990s and the early 2000s, the first online travel companies started to operate across the United States and Europe, laying the foundation for the online travel market as we know it today. It was during the second half of the 2000s, however, that the mobile travel market gradually started to take off. The launch of the Apple iPhone in 2007, and of the App Store a year later, undoubtedly played a big role in this new phase of the travel industry’s digitalization, introducing a new way to access the internet and formally beginning the mobile apps era. Today, 15 years after the first version of the Apple App Store, mobile apps are an important segment of the travel market, with the revenue of travel apps worldwide expected to reach 1.2 billion U.S. dollars in 2023.

What are the most popular travel apps?

Among the different metrics that can be used to measure the popularity of a mobile app, such as the retention rate, the number of downloads is a first useful indicator to understand the effective interest in that product. When focusing on the online travel agency (OTA) market, Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia were the most downloaded OTA apps worldwide in 2022. While Booking.com also led the list of the most downloaded online travel agency apps in the United States that year, Vrbo ranked second in that case.

Mobile travel booking trends

According to estimates by Statista on the revenue of leading OTAs worldwide broken down by device, the mobile segment was more profitable than the desktop one for Booking Holdings, generating over nine billion U.S. dollars in 2022. By contrast, desktop users accounted for the highest revenue of Expedia and Airbnb that year, showing that the mobile travel market has still much room for growth. In this respect, Statista Global Consumer Survey’s data on mobile payment by situation in the United States show that while 15 percent of respondents mentioned using mobile to pay for food and drinks in restaurants in 2022, just nine percent used this device for travel bookings. Meanwhile, in China, one of the countries with the highest revenue of travel apps globally, that figure was higher, as 13 percent of Chinese respondents reported using mobile payments for travel bookings.
This text provides general information. Statista assumes no liability for the information given being complete or correct. Due to varying update cycles, statistics can display more up-to-date data than referenced in the text.
Published by Statista Research Department, Jan 10, 2024

Key insights

Travel apps revenue worldwide
1.02bn USD
Revenue of travel apps in the United States
443.1m USD
Most downloaded travel app in the United States
Uber
Get more insights

Editor’s Picks Current statistics on this topic

Revenue of the travel apps market worldwide from 2017 to 2027 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Apps

Revenue of the travel apps industry worldwide 2017-2027

Number of aggregated downloads of selected leading online travel agency apps worldwide in 2023 (in millions)

Online Travel Market

Number of aggregated downloads of leading online travel agency apps worldwide 2023

Estimated desktop vs. mobile revenue of leading online travel agencies (OTAs) worldwide in 2023 (in billion U.S. dollars)

Online Travel Market

Estimated desktop vs. mobile revenue of leading OTAs worldwide 2023

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