The latest Travel Flash Report from Criteo reveals Turkey as the market experiencing the strongest growth in mobile bookings.

The findings are based on Criteo’s  analysis of aggregate data collected from more than 1,000 of its advertisers in the travel industry.

The topline takeaway is that “smartphone bookings are rising around the world, and hotels remain the subsector in which smartphone bookings are most common, generating one in five online bookings in Q2 2016.”

It added that “travellers are also beginning to book more expensive packages on smartphones, particularly in Asia Pacific.”

The regional breakdown shows that even in mature digital markets, smartphones are growing in importance. Mobile’s continued growth in countries such as the UK, the Nordic countries and the US is impressive and suggests that mobile will continue to take share from desktop.

Turkey is often seen as an emerging market. Criteo found that in the second quarter of this year, 39% of online travel bookings in the country were made by mobile, the highest proportion of the markets specified in the report.

And this represents a growth rate of 56% compared with the same period last year,  also the highest proportion.

Hotels get a lot of attention in the report, including a look at the correlation between device and duration for bookings made by users in France, Germany, Japan, UK  and US.

Out of all the hotel bookings made on an app, 70% are for one-night stays compared with 46% from desktop. Only one in ten app bookings are for more than three nights, prompting Criteo to recommend that hotel apps should concentrate on “right here right now” bookability.

The report also asked a 1,000-strong sample of US travellers the reasons why those with the means and opportunity to book on mobile still default to desktop.  The top reason is that desktop is greater convenience, although a big proportion — 58% — are reluctant to install a booking app onto their device.

Criteo suggests that travel firms can get users to install an app by “making it fast and easy….enticing [them] with perks and deals and by personalizing offers”.

Concerns over the security of mobile transactions were also cited by 54% as a reason not to use smartphones for booking travel.

Click here to see the report in full.

NB Image by Can Yalcin/BigStock.com