Interesting facts about trip bookings

In the 8 years since we built the RideBits platform. Thousands of ground transportation providers from limo companies, airport shuttles, private car/chauffeur services have used our platform to book millions of trips in over 50 countries.

We thought it would be interesting to look at some anonymized and aggregated data to see any interesting facts/trends about trip bookings and if the data matches what our intuition might say otherwise. Below are some of our findings...

1. Mobile device users now represent over 68% of visits to ground transportation provider websites

68% of all trips reserved online are booked using mobile phones. I expected this would be a huge number, but it's still amazing as the first version of RideBits was built back in 2012 when this number hovered around 10-15% and back then the focus was more about making web booking forms work for the few mobile visitors.

The continued increase of mobile bookings has always been a trend and was the main reason we developed an all new online booker recently for ground transportation providers called RideBits Booker which prioritizes the booking experience for clients using mobile devices.

2. Clients typically book 0 - 4 days before their trip

Over 55% of trips are booked within 4 days of the desired trip date and 80% of all trips are booked within 14 days of the desired trip date. The data suggests that 24% of trip bookings are for trips within 24 hours (aka same day bookings)

3. 64% of reservations are for trips less than 30 miles

A typical trip booking is about generally about 25 miles long. Most bookings are for trips less than 30 miles with the largest block being trips between 11 to 20 miles long. A very small percentage of bookings (5.8%) are for trips longer than 80 miles in distance.

For the measure of trip distance,  the statistical median (25 miles) is a better measure of  a "typical" trip rather than the statistical average (33 miles) as there are a few extremely long trips that are often over 500 miles that would significantly skew the average trip distance upwards.

4. Only 3% of bookings do not provide flight details for Airport pickups

For airport trips, especially airport pickups, the flight details are essential for operators/drivers to reliably pickup the passengers on time and also to be aware of delays or early arrivals. 97% of requests including this details obviously makes everyone's life easier.

As RideBits provides a way for clients to specify their flight details, it also provides operators and drivers with automated flight tracking tools to make the process easier.

5. The typical hourly booking is for 4 hours

In addition to pickups/drop offs, most transportation providers offer the ability for clients to simply book their services on an hourly basis. 75% of hourly charter bookings are for less than 6 hours of service while 10% are for services over 9 hours. Most providers do set hourly minimums of 2-3 hours.

6. 13% of trips are booked for someone else

The RideBits booking apps have a provision that let clients book for someone other than themselves. This could be executive assistants, personal assistants, family members, etc.

7.  Mondays & Tuesdays are the most common days where new trip requests are made

Weekdays are the main days for booking activity which is what we would expect as a lot of trips are business trips and planned during business hours.

8. Most trips happen on Fridays

The actual days of the week when trips occur is quite uniform as well, with fridays having a slightly noticable bump. This is an area we would like to look into more, however, there is an intersection between business travelers returning home on fridays and holidays travelers heading out on fridays.