While travel bookings took a hit amid the coronavirus pandemic, usage of online travel agency apps actually increased during the crisis as consumers at home browsed destinations and looked for flexible options.
Among OTAs,
Hopper
was the fastest-growing app in 2021, growing 494% and overtaking
Airbnb
as the leader in market share by monthly active users beginning in June 2021.
According to Apptopia’s
Travel Trendlines
report, Hopper’s growth is largely due to an influx of new users: In 2021, Hopper was the most downloaded OTA app with 15 million downloads compared to 5.3 million downloads in 2020.
New users flocked to Hopper to take advantage of a range of products - including
Price Freeze
, Cancel for Any Reason and Flight Disruption Guarantee – the OTA introduced amid the pandemic.
Today, around 50% of the company’s revenue comes from its fintech products, and, on average, customers are buying about two fintech products on every trip booked.
Expedia’s bet on rentals
Expedia
was the second fastest-growing app in 2021, with 49% year-on-year growth. (Expedia Group-owned Hotwire clocked in as the third fast-growing app with 33% growth, followed by Booking.com achieving 23% growth and Skyscanner with 19% growth.)
In addition to offering an exclusive app deal for 10% off a hotel stay early in the year, Expedia changed its app store subtitle from “All your travel in one place” to “Find your next vacation rental,” which helped it perform better.
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Expedia Group-owned
Vrbo
’s app has also performed well amid the pandemic: From September 2021 to February 2022, Vrbo increased sessions per MAU (browsing rentals) by 43% - more than any other OTA app during that period, including competitor Airbnb.
In February of this year, Vrbo counted 1.5 million downloads in the United States, its most ever for a calendar month.
Overall, apps advertising vacation rentals or homes in their title, subtitle, description or recent update are performing better than those that do not.
Excluding Airbnb and Vrbo, OTA apps with mention of vacation rentals grew users sessions by 352% and downloads by 180%.
Hotel, air, car
According to Apptopia’s report, downloads of the top five hotel apps dipped 3% year-on-year in 2021, while user sessions increased 34% - 2x the prior year-on-year usage growth rate.
Meanwhile, Airline app growth and usage benefited from COVID after an initial plunge because it was easy for users to cancel or modify reservations in the app.
For car rentals, user sessions hit an all-time high in Q4 2021 with 241.5 million and numbers continuing to climb throughout February 2022.
In 2021, Uber was the most downloaded travel app in the U.S. and the second most downloaded travel app worldwide, beaten only by Google Maps.
Didi, Bolt, Lyft and Grab were also among the top 10 most downloaded travel apps.