In the recent research report published by Think with Google, they have revealed the purchase patterns of Indonesian travellers. With the number of mobile connections much higher than the nation’s population (308.2 M against 255.5 M), it is pretty obvious that Indonesia is a mobile first country. This is the case with most of the developing countries as they are skipping the desktop generation and moving straight to mobile devices.
Where are they buying?
Due to the bias towards mobile, it has been observed that around 67 percent of people make their purchase on smartphones. In most other markets, consumers tend to start their travel research on mobile but usually complete the transaction on large screen devices. This doesn’t appear to be the case with travellers in Indonesia as 60 percent of them booked their accommodation online and over 70 percent of those buyers completed the booking on a smartphone. Still they are switching seamlessly between multiple devices making it difficult for brands to easily gauge the impact of mobile devices.
The report also indicates that not all booking services enjoy the high conversion rate on mobile. 91 percent of the smartphone bookings were made on travel aggregators like Agoda and Traveloka. These sites enjoy much higher reach and claim a stronger share of the time a traveller spends researching as compared to the travel service providers.
Payment options break the deal
The penetration of credit cards is very low in Indonesia. Only 3 percent of the population owns a credit card and this coupled with less reliable internet connections in the country make credit card a less popular payment option. People there consider submitting their card details on mobile too risky and prefer bank transfers. The respondents in the research indicated that they will move away from a website if their preferred options aren’t available.
Offline touchpoints still drive inspiration
A consumer can be inspired online or offline. The interest is usually driven by other travellers sharing their stories, online or offline. In the research, it was found that offline touch points feature more prominently to trigger the interest and then they turn to web. They kick off their research by visiting search engines & aggregators and go on to use other services once they have narrowed on a destination.
Mobile is a major contributor here as it functions as a social connector between online and offline conversations. Catchy photos and videos act as the best triggers to initiate searches about a destination. The most popular use of smartphone during a journey is to share the experience followed by its use for searching food and attractions.
Building for the Indonesian traveller
While it is obvious that mobile can’t be left out of for any market, it holds even more relevance for the travel market of Indonesia. The report also suggests some strategies for travel brands competing to get the attention of their travellers. Firstly they have to focus on inspiring by offering quality content. Then they have to ensure that they are offering relevant information when the users start searching and lastly they need to offer the payment options consumers are comfortable with.
You can find the full report and the data sources here.
