Restaurants and hotels must offer multi-platform online booking
The company's Consumer Barometer 2015, which launches today (10 June), has examined how consumers research and book hotels and restaurants online.
Thirty-one per cent of all sales in the restaurant sector are driven by online research, with 28 per cent of consumers using their smart phone to do so.
Diners are prone to make their eating-out choices last minute, with 28 per cent beginning their research less than an hour before making a purchase decision.
Online booking platforms are even more important to the hotel sector - where four out of five people now book their rooms online, with 81 per cent researching their options online beforehand.
Google found that the average UK consumer now owns three separate mobile devices, meaning operators must ensure their online offering works across different platforms to maximise on potential sales.
Peter Cory, agency sales director at Google, said: “Consumer habits are changing fast, making it challenging for brands to understand and predict how and when it’s best to reach them. In the UK alone, we’ve seen significant increases in the number of devices owned and that’s having a direct effect on the way consumers conduct their day-to-day lives - how they consume media, how they research products and how, when and where they buy.”
A recent study found that a third of consumers use two or more devices when researching hotel bookings.
According to Google, 51 per cent of consumers own tablets, and 75 per cent own a personal computer. Seventy-one per cent of Britons own a smartphone and 60 per cent use a search engine on their phone on a weekly basis.
Companies have been urged to create an ‘integrated experience’ across multiple platforms, offering incentives for consumers to sign in on every platform, to create an improved customer experience.
Google’s Consumer Barometer examines digital, mobile, video and shopping habits using data from over 400,000 respondents across 56 countries, including the UK.
