Market intelligence providers Similarweb have released a new report entitled State of the Mobile Web - US - 2018 on research into mobile usage in 3 verticals: shopping travel and finance.

Here are some of there significant findings about how mobile devices are used in buying travel:

• Travel websites got 55.6% of their traffic from mobile devices in 2017.
• Average bounce rate was 36% for mobile vs. 28% for desktop. A relatively high proportion of traffic coming from search (vs. direct) may be a factor in these Travel bounce rates, which are higher than for Shopping or Finance sites.
• Booking.com received a higher-than-average 68% of its traffic from mobile devices in 2017, while hotels.com got an essentially average 56%.
• Overall average bounce rate for the top 100 Hotel & Accommodation sites was 42%.
• Bounce rates for both hotels.com and booking.com, both mobile and desktop, were lower than the category average.
• Visits to both hotels.com and booking.com were longer than the category average; but visits on both mobile and desktop to booking.com were longer than those to hotels.com (6.4 minutes vs. 5.7 on mobile), suggesting better user engagement at booking.com.
• Both hotels.com and booking.com get a higher proportion of traffic from search on mobile, vs. desktop.
• Mobile searches to hotels.com came 62% from non-branded keywords, while those to booking.com came 93% from non-branded keywords.
• Similarweb researchers conclude from this that booking.com is using a keyword strategy that optimizes mobile search for generic terms like "cheap hotels", "hotels near me", etc.

Is that a winning strategy? We'll have to wait and see what story the 2018 numbers will tell.