September 8th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
The last couple of months weren’t easy on air travelers, with sticky weather conditions, overcrowding, technical snags, flight delays and outright cancellations spelling chaos on the runway. Against this backdrop, it’s worth asking: Are consumers keen on checking reviews for airlines before they book their tickets? In this piece, we look at how keen consumers are on checking reviews for airlines along with another category central to the travel experience - hotels.
A recent YouGov survey asked consumers across 18 international markets about the types of products they watch reviews for on social media. Over a quarter,(27%) of overall respondents are most likely to watch product reviews for food and clothing or shoes on social media. Gadgets and electronics (26%), home appliances (21%) and makeup/skincare products (21%) follow.
A fifth of (20%) consumers say they have watched product reviews for hotels or airlines on social media in the last three months.
Among the categories of products listed, consumers are least likely to watch reviews for, toys (10%), tools (11%) and financial products or services (14%).
Let’s look at the proportion of consumers who say they watch product reviews for hotels and airlines on social media, by country.
Mexico accounts for the largest share of consumers who watch product reviews for hotels or airlines (38%); US accounts for the least (5%).
In Great Britain, around one in ten (9%) consumers have watched product reviews for hotels or airlines on social media in the last three months. The two markets - the US and Great Britain - where consumers are the least likely to watch reviews of hotels and airlines, were the ones that made headlines for the larger chunk of flight disruptions last year.
UAE ranks second in the list of markets surveyed, with more than a third (36%) of consumers saying they have watched hotels or airlines reviews in the last three months. Consumers in Australia aren’t too keen on watching social media reviews of hotels and airlines with a little over one in ten (11%) saying they have done so.
Compared to Europe, consumers in Asia are more likely to watch product reviews for hotels or airlines on social media. In Asia, Hong Kong leads other markets with over a third (34%) consumers here watching hotel or airline reviews, followed by India (31%).
As for Europe, Spain tops the list of markets (34%) while Poland and Germany (14% each) are at the bottom.
Finally coming to the Nordics, Sweden reports a higher share of consumers (23%) than Denmark (15%) who claim to have watched product reviews for hotels or airlines on social media in the past three months.
Explore our living data - for free
Discover more travel and tourism content here
Want to run your own research? Run a survey now
Make smarter business decisions with better intelligence. Understand exactly what your audience is thinking by leveraging our panel of 20 million+ members. Speak with us today.
YouGov Surveys: Serviced provides quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 18 markets with sample sizes varying between 437 and 2045 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in June 2023. Data from each market uses a nationally representative sample apart from Mexico and India, which use urban representative samples, and Indonesia and Hong Kong, which use online representative samples. Learn more about YouGov Surveys: Serviced.
Photo by Will Truettner on Unsplash