Interesting – and perhaps some surprising – results from a survey produced to understand more about consumers who buy budget and hostel accommodation.
Hostelbookers ran the survey in late-2010 and got 15,000 responses, so a very thorough sample size and therefore worth taking a deeper look.
The survey looks at booking trends, influences, expectations, use of digital media and devices, and a few off-kilter questions at the end.
Here is a selection of the results:
How far in advance do you plan your trip?
Where do you get information from when planning a trip?
Note that the survey was carried out online, so a skewing of the top results as always, but interesting to see the influence (or not) of blogs, Facebook and Twitter, and mobile apps.
How do you keep in contact with people while you are away?
Facebook as an influence tool appears to be low (as above), but a strong communication device. Interesting for advertisers and fan page owners.
How often do you use the internet when travelling?
How do you access the internet when you travel?
Mobile devices still getting low use overseas, probably due to continued prohibitive roaming costs.
Do you use videos to research the destination(s) that you are travelling to?
Often told video, video, video, but perhaps not as influential as some suggest.
NB: Age breakdown saw 25% from both 21 to 24 and 25 to 29 ranges, around 20% over-40 and 15% from 30 to 34. Location: 25% from the UK, 10% Australian, 9% US and 5% from Canada. 50% were full-time employed, just over 25% in college or university education.
NB2: Some of the other results are here.
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About Kevin May
There was also interesting data in the survey on the length of trips taken by independent travelers. With a large proportion less than three weeks. Contravenes assumptions that all hostel users are backpackers on long jaunts.
btw – there is no link or identification of the source of the survey.
@ben – agree.
NB: Have added a link to the results that Hostelbookers put on their site.
I have been in many a hostel where almost everyone in the lounge was on a laptop or netbook computer, and every screen was on Facebook.
I have yet to see anyone use Twitter.
I think there’s some pretty surprising figures in the survey (and I’m not referring to the bonking section of the report – no surprises there!) and it would be interesting to see the survey results contrasted to Hostelbookers actual booking data.
What caught my attention in particular was the “How far in advance do you plan your trip” bit. While the side note seems to equate “planning” with “booking”, that may not actually be the case in the respondents mind and it would be interesting to see if HBs data supports it.
I say that because 50% of our bookings come in 1-10 days before the stay and the average lead time is around 22 days. While the bulk of these were not through HB, I’ve have thought our readership was much like theirs.
Other thoughts:
* Personal recommendation largely worthless.
* Think the trip length thing is a bit of a red herring as longer term travellers would tend to book less in general.
* Obvious omission in the “why do you travel” bit is “I travel to get wasted and get laid” — I’d imagine that would have knocked “sightseeing” out of the park — at least in the younger age brackets.
Very surprised that 25% of respondents travelling alone.
30 quid a night on accommodation isn’t meagre!!!
All up a pretty interesting roundup.