Mobile has overtaken fixed internet access and changed everything. This was a shared consensus amongst experts at the WIT Japan and North Asia conference, held between June 4-5 in Tokyo.
In Asia, a generation of savvy, smartphone-wielding travellers are poised to shake up the industry. Speakers at the conference agreed that we are at the peak of the smartphone era, with conversion rates on mobile exceeding search engine results.
In Korea,70% of online travel purchases are already occurring via mobile while in China, over 50% of travel bookings are done via mobile.
With an estimated 1.29 billion mobile users right now and growing, the Chinese market is still only in its infancy - 10% of these mobile users are on 4G and over half the population are still on 2.0 and 2.5G phones.