I’ve lifted the following from an article by Brett Snyder at BNET who was at the recent Southwest media day.

The following shows the percent of respondents who think they can book Southwest flights on the following sites:

  • Southwest.com — 85 percent
  • Expedia — 32 percent
  • Travelocity — 32 percent
  • Orbitz — 28 percent
  • Kayak — 14 percent
  • TripAdvisor — 13 percent
  • Other — 6 percent

He makes the point that everyone must be wondering – what on earth do the other 15% of people think you do on Southwest.com?

It just goes to show how even things we take for granted may not always be so obvious to the man on the street. And I was only discussing in the comments recently with a reader about why some travel technology we may think is great, fails to get picked up by the the mainstream masses. If 15% of people didn’t know you could book tickets on Southwest.com, maybe you now can  better appreciate why getting mass adoption on your cool new mobile phone travel app is so difficult.