Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Results
Comparing smartphone users with non-users
When we compared the responses for smartphone users with non-users, our fi ndings suggested
that in general, smartphone users are heavier Internet users. There was a signifi cantly higher
propensity for smartphone users to use the Internet for information search, emailing and reading
news on a daily basis. Smartphone users were more frequent users of fi nancial services, purchasing
travel related service and purchasing tickets for events based on weekly basis. It is worth
noting that more than half non-smartphone users never use the Internet for social networking
(52.7 per cent) or downloading music (59.5 per cent), which is much greater compared with
smartphone users (social network 27.2 per cent, download music 25.2 per cent). This fi nding
is interesting although this large discrepancy could be attributed to the higher age profi le of
respondents to this survey.
In order to understand in further detail the differences between the two groups in their
use of different types of Internet activities we undertook a factor analysis of the different
activities and looked for patterns between users and non-users. We used a standard Principal
Component Analysis usingVarimax method and Kaiser normalization. The data were stable over
four iterations. Three factors were identifi ed, which we labelled:
travel related activity (including: information search, purchase travel services and purchase
tickets for events);
leisure related activity (including: social networking and downloading music);
work related activity (including: emailing, fi nancial services, news).
In terms of the whole range of activities, items in the travel related factor were used less frequently
amongst all respondents. However, smartphone owners were more likely to use the Internet for
these items on a weekly-monthly basis than non-users. As noted in the crosstab, in the leisure cat-
egory, the interesting issue was the lack of likeliness that non-users would engage in these activities
on the Internet, and fi nally in the work-related category, smartphone users' activity levels in the
various associated activities are more prevalent on the daily to weekly basis than non-users.
How are smartphones used in tourism?
The survey asked smartphone users if they used any of the types of mobile digital applications
on different types of trips (business or leisure). The highest use of any application by respondents
is for domestic trips whether for business or leisure. Our assumption is that international
roaming charges prohibit the use of application services when abroad for many leisure users.
In terms of domestic leisure trips, directional services (n=71) received the highest number
of responses, followed by transport applications such as train line, fl ight track etc. Many
respondents use directional service applications on domestic business trips as well. Smartphones
are much less used during international trips. But accessing applications containing company
specifi c services (n=18) such as British Airways or Hilton, together with applications offering
tourist assistance (n=23) (e.g. currency rate, language translation), are the two types of applications
most used through smartphones.
In general, for business trips, the smartphone is mostly used for transport planning followed
by directional services. For leisure trips, the most popular applications are directional services,
fi nding out what's on and social networking.
