November 30th, 2023, Lesley Simeon
People usually have plenty to say about airlines and their experiences flying with them – a carrier’s on-time performance, the in-flight meals, the baggage allowance, the pricing of the tickets and more all factor into conversations about travel. But does word-of-mouth have any impact on consumers' airline booking choices?
According to a recent YouGov survey that polled consumers across 17 international markets, just over one in ten consumers (12%) say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal with choosing airlines and three in ten (30%) of consumers say it helps them a fair deal.
Almost a quarter of them disagree however - 24% of all consumers across markets say word-of-mouth doesn’t help very much when selecting airlines and 13% say it doesn’t help at all.
Younger consumers are more likely than the older ones to say that word-of-mouth helps them choose which airline to fly with. While consumers aged between 25-to-32-years are most likely (16%) to say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal, 35-to-44-year-olds (33%) are most likely to say it helps them a fair amount.
On the other hand, older consumers are more likely to say word-of-mouth doesn’t help much or doesn’t help them at all, when it comes to airlines-related purchase decisions. For instance, 45-to-54-year-olds are most likely (27%) to say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much and consumers aged 55+ years and above are most likely to say (16%) it doesn’t help them at all.
Asians more likely than Europeans to find word-of-mouth useful when deciding which airline to choose
Looking at data from all the markets we survey, we see that Asians are more likely than Europeans to say word-of-mouth is helpful when making purchases for airlines-related products and services.
For instance, all of the Asian countries we survey find a spot in the top ten markets whose consumers are most likely to say word-of-mouth helps a great deal. While UAE leads the table (28%), Mexico (27%), Hong Kong (27%), Indonesia (19%), India (18%) and Singapore (14%) are countries where consumers are most likely to say word-of-mouth helps them a great deal when deciding which airlines to choose.
Right at the bottom of the list, Sweden and Denmark (4% each) are the least likely across all our markets to say word-of-mouth helps a great deal. Consumers in both these markets (17% each) are also the least likely across markets to say word-of-mouth helps a fair amount in purchases for airline products and services. Flyers from Hong Kong are most likely to say the same (45%) across all markets, while the Spanish (33%) are most likely to say so in Europe.
In the US, less than a quarter of all consumers (22%) say word-of-mouth doesn’t help them very much when it comes to airlines.
As for Great Britain, consumers here are most likely (29%) to say word-of-mouth is not of much help. A quarter of Britons say it helps a fair amount and 6% say it helps a great deal.
More than two in ten consumers in Sweden (21%) say word-of-mouth is of no help at all in purchasing airlines-related products and services. Denmark (19%), Great Britain (17%) and France (16%) follow Sweden.
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Methodology: YouGov Surveys: Serviced provide quick survey results from nationally representative or targeted audiences in multiple markets. The data is based on surveys of adults aged 18+ years in 17 markets with sample sizes varying between 2001 and 508 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in September 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.
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