January 15th, 2024, Lesley Simeon
Consumers often flock to online reviews and ratings of the products or services they may want to purchase. But how influential are online reviews when it comes to choosing airlines?
In earlier pieces, we discussed how regularly consumers use such sources of information before purchasing products related to cinema, TV shows and finance or investment. Polling data shows that when it comes to choosing products/services related to airlines, consumers are less likely to refer to online reviews. Just over two in ten consumers across markets (21%) say they look up online reviews before making an airline-related purchase.
Our data reveals that hotels (44%) top the list of product or service categories that consumers use online reviews and ratings for making purchasing decisions.
Looking at data from individual markets, equal proportions of consumers in the UAE and Hong Kong (37% each) say they regularly refer to online reviews and ratings when choosing airlines. They’re also the highest across all the markets we survey to say this. Singapore (30%), Mexico (28%) and Canada (24%) complete our top five. Indians and Indonesians (23% each) are the least likely in Asia to use online reviews for airlines.
As for Europe, consumers in Sweden (22%) are most likely to take to online reviews when deciding on airlines. Respondents in four markets - Poland, US, Great Britain and Germany - claim the last few spots on our list. Consumers in these markets (13% each) are the least likely, not just in Europe but across all markets, to say they fall back on online reviews when making airline/air travel-related purchase decisions.
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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 501 and 2004 for each market. All surveys were conducted online in October 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.