Nearly all smartphone users resort to phoning a travel firm while searching for information on their phones.

A new study from Google has found that 94% need to contact a business direct at some point when searching and 32%, of the 1,500 people questioned, regularly need to call a business when searching products on their phone.

Within the travel sector, click-to-call, where mobile users can click through to phone the company, is most important during the purchase phase and over half would call a travel business to make changes to their reservation or booking.

40% of mobile searchers are most likely to call when reserving a hire car, 37% when searching for hotels and 30% when seeking flights.

According to the IAB Travel Audit 2013, 42% of the top 50 UK travel companies optimise their search results for mobile and, of those, 45% use click to call.

Wanting answers more quickly and needing more information than a website could provide were the other main reasons provided for using phoning.

Wednesday, February 26, 2014