Mobile air travel booking rises 116% in Saudi Arabia

Wednesday, March 21, 2018

The use of smart phones for air travels has rose a hefty 116 percent in Saudi Arabia in 2017.

The smartphone applications are now emerging as the trendiest among the Saudi Arabians for air bookings while the desktops remained the dominant platform in the wider region for purchasing flight tickets, travel company Cleartrip.

It was published by Travel Insights. Some of the major urban regions like Riyadh there is a highest rate of mobile bookings at 32%  of all transactions with Jeddah close by at 31 percent.

The mobile bookings in the Saudi Kingdom also comprised almost a third of all ticket purchases last year.

The 2017 Travel Insights Report also noted that the majority of air bookings in the region — and Saudi Arabia in particular — were usually made a week prior to travel, although the report noted that mobile platforms were popular for last-minute travel bookings.

Cleartrip also said that interestingly, the findings showed that there is a clear connection between the number of travellers per ticket and the platform used for booking.

Dubai was the top destination for travellers in the region last year, followed by Sharjah, Manila and Abu Dhabi.

Yerevan was the most trending destination for 2017, among the Americans with bookings posting a whopping 498 percent rise over the previous year, followed by Georgia’s Tbilisi and Nepal’s Kathmandu with both destinations recording twofold increases in online bookings.

Yerevan and Tbilisi have been heavily promoted as affordable travel and tourism alternatives and are extremely popular destinations, particularly for individuals in the UAE who need to go on a visa run to renew their stay in the Emirate.

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