Vietnam develops an appetite for booking trips by phone

Mobile travel sales accounted for around 7 percent of total online sales in Vietnam in 2016.

Over the past four years, mobile sales have witnessed strong growth of nearly 60 percent, a new report released by Criteo, an internet advertising company, revealed.

“Travel expenditure in Vietnam will rise rapidly due to increasing disposable incomes and growing middle-class affluence,” said Alban Villani, general manager of Criteo Southeast Asia, Hong Kong and Taiwan.

“Vietnam is a mobile-first society with a very high mobile penetration rate. Since the ubiquitous presence of internet, online and mobile traveling purchases become more commonplace. We expect digital traveling will become the new trend of traveling,” he added.

In comparison to other countries, mobile travel sales in Vietnam contribute modestly to total online travel sales, but are expected to take up a bigger slice of online travel sales by the end of 2020, according to the report. During the next five years, the revenue generated from travel purchases via mobile is expected to grow by 22.4 percent.

Travel remains an area that the Vietnamese are devoted to, according to the report. During 2016, Vietnamese people took 6.9 million outbound trips and 52.8 million domestic trips, said the report.

On average, each Vietnamese person took 5.6 trips each in the last 12 months.

Online and mobile strategies are crucial for retailers and online travel agents to engage with shoppers while they browse and book trips and ancillaries.

The survey was conducted in February 2017 among 1,900 travelers from Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan and Vietnam who search or book travel products online.