Only 42% of newly signed up travel app users transact in the first month: Report

CleverTap, the all-in-one engagement platform, released its industry benchmark report for travel apps. In the rapidly evolving mobile apps landscape, staying ahead of the competition is crucial for marketers. Therefore, benchmarking performance has become imperative to stay ahead of competition. Travel app marketers will be able to boost conversions and drive higher app activity through the report's insights.

While 80% of travel app users that sign up, do so within 31 seconds, only 42% make a transaction within the first month. This is markedly lower than fintech's 95% and foodtech's 65% signup to conversion rate. Studies have found that users do not see travel apps as being very different from interacting with travel agents. This means that while they may readily sign up for an app; the process of making a transaction may carry the same reservations as with old-school travel agents. Overcoming this challenge requires travel app marketers to place special emphasis on their retention strategies by going above and beyond in providing meaningful value to customers.

CleverTap analyzed 17.9 billion push notifications, 3.8 billion emails, 919.1 million in-app messages, and a total of 64.17 million monthly active users (MAUs). The findings reflect data collected from Asia-Pacific, Europe, India, Latin America, Middle-East, and North America. These include:

Install to sign-up rate: 1 in 4 users that install travel apps (28%) end up signing up within the first week.

Average time to sign-up: 80% of the users that sign-up, do so within 31 seconds of launching the app for the first time.

Sign-up to conversion rate: 42% of newly signed-up users make a transaction in the first month.

Average time to to convert: 36% of newly signed-up users move from onboarding to deeper-in-the-funnel engagement within a week of onboarding.

Session frequency: On average, travel app users launch their app around 12 times a month.

Average week 1 retention rate: 13% of newly signed-up users make repeat transactions in the first week.

Average click through rate for push notifications: On average, 5.29% of Android users and 3.97% of iOS users will click on and interact with push notifications.

Average click through rate for in-app notifications: The click through rate for travel in-app notifications is 22.8%.

Average email open rate: 35.17% users open emails sent by travel app companies

Average Stickiness Quotient: Travel apps have a stickiness quotient of 18%, that indicates less than one-fifth of monthly active users (MAUs) consistently return to the app.

"With more than a billion travel app users today, brands must emphasize retention more than ever. Sometimes a slight nudge here, a small reminder there may be enough to get users to complete unfulfilled transactions or re-engage with the app. But to maximize customer lifetime value in the long term, marketers need to be agile and identify weak spots within the app's metrics proactively." said Jacob Joseph, VP – Data Science, CleverTap. "Our benchmark report spans billions of data points including push notifications, emails and in-app notifications – giving marketers a holistic view of the industry. Coupled with our world leading platform which spans the entire lifetime of a customer, we are confident this will equip marketers with the right tools to raise the bar even higher."