According to the findings of a survey, UK travellers prefer to book their holidays online rather than use an agent.
Trivago, a hotel price comparison website, has completed a survey of around 4,142 people during a two week period, from August 13 to 27, 2012.
Around 85 percent of respondents prefer to book their own hotels through the Internet, using a computer or a smartphone, as travel arrangements become more high tech every year. Only 15 percent of travellers from eight different countries had opted to book their holidays via the traditional methods of visiting a travel agent or calling the hotel directly.
As for British respondents, around 93 percent of participants have opted to book their hotels electronically, the largest proportion for a single country in the survey. Around 80 percent of the participants prefer to use the Internet, and 13 percent of them book via smartphone apps.
Only around 4 percent of the respondents prefer calling the hotel directly, and around 3 percent visit a travel agent.
In an earlier survey relating to hotel facilities, the company discovered that 59 percent of the UK based respondents were willing to forgo a mini bar for cheaper rooms, but only 15 percent were willing to give up Wi-Fi services for a cheaper room, which implies still further that technology is increasingly shaping the way that travellers think.
Trivago is an online search site comparing hotel rates from around 500,000 hotels, from around 100 booking sites globally, and offering more than 34 million hotel reviews, and 14 million photos.
