Singles’ Day was yesterday, November 11, a date that’s becoming increasingly popular among Spaniards who mark this new day of online commerce in their calendar to search for offers for singles.
The online travel agency Destina has drawn up a profile on the buying and travel habits of single people who spend more money on flights, trips and hotel rooms on this platform.
Destina also has a special page on its website aimed at this target group, with the best holiday plans for singles and a variety of destinations and activities for solo travellers.
According to the analysis of customer usage data from Destinia complied between 2016 and 2018, we observed that singles not only travel for longer periods of time but also spend more.
More specifically, people travelling alone in 2018 did so on average for 6.3 days, almost twice as long as those who travelled accompanied by others (3.7 days on average).
And in terms
of financial outlay, in the last year, singles spent 79% more on average
than those who travelled accompanied.
This difference in the amount of money spent on travel may be caused by two things
that Destinia looked at when drafting this profile: the type of trip they take
and additional services contracted.
Singles prefer urban destinations in European capitals, Mediterranean sun and beach tourism and long-distance travel, with North and Latin America proving to be extremely popular.
Singles are more likely to contract additional services along with their flights, hotels and travel: 39.98% also add personalised options to their purchase, which facilitate the management of their reservation, cancellation services and check-in.
Another point to highlight is single people’ flexibility to adapt to more innovative methods of payment. Although most of them prefer to pay by credit card (40.57%) when making their reservations, others are using non-traditional payment methods such as PayPal (18.20%) and the cryptocurrency Bitcoin (17.20) among others.
Compared to people who travel with others, singles are more flexible
when it comes to enjoying their holidays, seasonal trends are by and large
ignored, and they don’t expect as much when it comes to booking.
According to
the data from Destinia, singles not only enjoy their holidays during the summer
months, as is the trend among those travelling accompanied, but also travel in spring
(March, April and May).
Regarding advanced booking, singles mainly start
to look for their holidays in the second quarter of the year (as opposed to
those travelling with others who do so at the beginning of the year), when many
others are starting to enjoy them, which results in a more impulsive
consumption profile with last-minute bookings.
In 2018, 50.13% of users who booked their trips on Destinia did so only
for themselves; this figure fits the trend of the singles’ sector that is
increasingly appearing in more markets and areas of our society. We only have
to look at the number of homes with only one person in Spain, which in 2018
stood at 4,732,400, 4.35% more than in 2014 according to the Continuous
Household Survey carried out by the Spanish National Statistics Institute.
