With the United States set to relax travel restrictions for fully-vaccinated visitors, we used our app intelligence solutions to analyze how three of the top Android travel apps — Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia — have performed during COVID-19.

The COVID-19 pandemic devastated the travel and hospitality industries. At one point in 2020, for instance, Airbnb resorted to laying off 25% of its workforce. Not long after, the company’s CEO Brian Chesky warned that global travel may never fully recover.

What’s more, the International Air Transport Association (IATA) found that 2020 was the airline industry’s worst year on record, with losses totaling 126 billion U.S. dollars. For its part, The Economist noted that the number of total passengers traveling on all commercial airlines in April 2020 was 94 percent lower than in April 2019.

However, with vaccines now widely available in the United States and Europe, travel is ticking back up. Couple this with the fact that the United States has announced it will lift its travel restrictions come November, and the future is looking much rosier than many industry leaders anticipated amid lockdowns and shelter-in-place orders.

So, for this blog post, we decided to take a look at COVID-era download trends for three of the most popular Android travel apps in the world: Booking.com, Airbnb, and Expedia.

Here’s what we cover (click the links below to jump to the relevant sections):

• The Top Android Travel Apps
• Analysis of the Top Android Travel Apps During the COVID-19 Pandemic
• Final Thoughts
  
  

The Top Android Travel Apps

1. Booking.com: Hotels and more by Booking.com Hotels & Vacation Rentals

• Short Description: Stay flexible with free cancellation.
• Downloads Over the Last 30 Days: 10,107,728
  
  

2. Airbnb by Airbnb

• Short Description: The Airbnb app brings together a global community of guests and Hosts.
• Downloads Over the Last 30 Days: 3,900,959
  
  

3. Expedia: Hotels, Flights & Car by Expedia

• Short Description: Book car, flight, packages. Get instant access to hotel discounts and 2x rewards.
• Downloads Over the Last 30 Days: 389,487
  
  

For more travel app insights, set up a meeting with one of our experts!

Analysis of the Top Android Travel Apps During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Downloads in the COVID-19 Era (October 18, 2020 - October 18, 2021)

In the graph above, you’ll find historical global downloads for each of the top Android travel apps during the COVID era. It tracks daily downloads over the last year.

The first thing that jumps out is Booking.com’s dominance. While these apps combined for 142,313,303 downloads, Booking.com accounted for 106,487,325 downloads on its own. That’s 75% of the combined total.

Booking.com also had the best single day performance, notching 1,045,188 downloads on August 1st, 2021 (peak season for vacationers all over the world). By comparison, Airbnb cracked 300,000 daily downloads just twice while Expedia topped out at 62,160 daily downloads.

However, one interesting thing to note is that downloads for each app spiked on September 15th and September 20th, 2021, right around the time the United States announced it would be easing its travel restrictions.

Final Thoughts

One thing the graph above makes clear is that downloads for the top travel apps are on the rise. Of course, much of these gains are related to the summer holidays — each of the five most dramatic spikes occurred after June 2021.

Nevertheless, baseline downloads have remained relatively high throughout September and October, with users clearly responding to the news of easing restrictions. So, with the States welcoming fully vaccinated international visitors beginning November 8th, look for travel apps to continue their upward trajectory.

More App Insights from 42matters

At 42matters, we provide app data, insights, and analytics via a host of useful APIs, file dumps, the 42matters SDK Explorer, and the 42matters Explorer. This includes:

• Developer details
• Downloads
• Ratings, reviews, and top chart rankings
• Categories, genres, and IAB categories
• Technical insights, including SDKs, permissions, and app-ads.txt
• And more

The 42matters Explorer is an app market research tool that offers a comprehensive look at app trends and statistics. This includes data on both iOS and Android apps. Moreover, our APIs facilitate programmatic access to app intelligence data from both Google Play and the Apple App Store, as well as the Amazon Appstore, Tencent MyApp, Apple TV App Store, Fire TV, and the Roku Channel Store.

To learn more about 42matters, schedule a meeting with one of our app market experts. We’ll walk you through everything.