Small Luxury Hotels of the World has seen a surge in traffic from mobile and tablet devices in the last year.
In January 2013, 30% of visits to slh.com from the UK were from a mobile device, compared to 18% in 2012.
This data mirrors a nationwide technology trend for the travel industry according to a Google UK survey that revealed during the third quarter of 2012, 33% of all online searches for accommodation were from a mobile device. A sharp increase from the same quarter in 2011 when mobile accounted for just 5% of searches.
More than 14% of all slh.com bookings in the last two quarters of 2012 were made by iPad, iPhone and Android, up from 7% across the same period in 2011.
In the UK 18% of SLH hotel stays were booked via iPad in January 2013, up from 7% in January 2012.
China and Russia saw a particularly large increase in year on year bookings by iPad accounting for 24% (compared to 0% in 2012) and 15% (up 700%) of total bookings respectively.
In terms of slh.com visits by mobile devices, the developed economies saw the most significant growth. The iPad continues to be the most popular handset for searching for hotels with visits from the UK recording the largest share of total at 22% in January 2013, up 108% year on year, followed by Canada (19%), France (17%) and Germany (16%).
Visits through iPhones were also marginally up year on year with the Canadian and Chinese markets both seeing the most significant jump, recording a 193% and 105% increase in traffic. Android visits were also up in most markets, although it still represents a very small proportion of the total volume of website visits.