Mobile and Technology

A report by Reuters has highlighted that travel industry is targeting a new breed of travellers who “rely more on their mobile smart phones -- the iPhone, BlackBerry or Android -- to negotiate, book and manage trips they have already begun”.

Published: 06 Sep 2010

A report by Reuters has highlighted that travel industry is targeting a new breed of travellers who “rely more on their mobile smart phones -- the iPhone, BlackBerry or Android -- to negotiate, book and manage trips they have already begun”.

“They are booking at the last minute. They are booking near where they are located,” reportedly said John Caine, the senior vice president in charge of mobile development at Priceline.com. “I think they’re staying shorter because they have flexibility.”

This year priceline.com came up with a new version of its Hotel Negotiator App which allows travellers to point their phones in a desired direction and the radar sweeps the area looking for hotels.

Experience

It is recommended that mobile travel information and booking services need to be quick, easy, and light on data transfer.

In an interview with EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta, Bill Keen, director of product development, IHG, emphasised that the experience will need to be tailored to shorten key transactional flows either through utilisation of key features of the phone - geo-location, mapping and integration with voice –better use of the content such as highlighting select key amenities that are important to last minute bookers, and integrating in profile data such as room preferences and credit card information. Keen is also clear that the mobile experience will not replace the deliberate planning process involved with something as important as an annual family holiday.

“The mobile experience is designed for a real-world context with lots of distractions. It is designed for somebody making a booking while waiting on a busy street corner or hurrying to figure out if a hotel room is available at the next subway stop,” said Keen.

“If you look at the regular booking cycle of trip planning/research, book, pre stay planning, in market arrival, hotel stay and post book activities, I tend to agree that trip planning is an activity best suited to other channels. However, booking – especially last minute bookings – along with pre stay planning and in market arrival can be natural fits for the mobile channel. Our statistics show that roughly 70 percent of mobile web bookings are same day compared to 11 percent via the web. Customers who book that day utilise the convenience of “always on, always tethered” mobile devices with location based capabilities to ease the booking and pre stay experience,” Keen said.

Opportunity

priceline.com’s executive vice president - corporate development, Glenn D. Fogel says location based applications will become more and more important over time.

“The combination of sophisticated mobile devices coupled with location based applications opens up a world of possibilities. What neither we nor anyone really knows is how this technology will play out,” said Fogel. “Do people want discount coupons from a Starbucks as they walk past it? Do people want marketers to know where they are? Some of the time? All of the time? None of the time? Over time, there will be many different business models and a few will bubble up to the top. We just don’t know which ones these will be yet.”

The whole location based eco-system is interesting because in the past the travel company was the primary organisation that “knew” where the traveller was at any particular time. So, for example, one could market local products or services to a traveller who was going to a particular place and be paid for those sales. “Now, anyone will be able to do very tight local based marketing when the traveller is on his trip. Essentially, information (which has a value) was “owned” by the travel company and now this information will be much more accessible,” Fogel said.

There’s still some way to go though. There is enormous potential for travel businesses to upsell, improve check in services, sell post purchase ancillary add ons or give greater relevant information all linked to location specific information.

This whole area is largely untapped and will be an enormous opportunity for brands to create differentiation in the immediate future.

Involvement

The choice of hotel for most people is an involved process – location, facilities, brand, price all have a role to play especially when people are choosing their annual holiday. This perhaps makes it more suitable for PC-based browsing.

The mobile experience will not replace the deliberate planning process involved with something as important as an annual family holiday. For a full planning process, customers need a large screen with multi-tasking and easy inputs. More importantly, the context of the mobile experience does not lend itself to this type of deliberate planning process. Users need a stable environment with few distractions.

One area where mobile can help the deliberate planning process is with social networking. Users can quickly share plans and get feedback from co-travellers who are not collocated for the planning process.

As mobile and social technology continues to evolve, a traveller’s information will flow freely across all the different services they want to use, resulting in a profoundly better travel experience. The widespread availability of high-speed mobile Internet means that more intelligent services will be available to every traveller when they are needed most. Typically, that will be while the traveller is on the road.

Customers will increasingly demand an end-to-end engagement across a range of platforms, and to be able to research, consume and share travel information on whichever device they find most useful at a particular stage of their decision-making process.

Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010

priceline’s executive vice president - corporate development, Glenn D. Fogel is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010, to be held in Chicago (13-14 October). The two-day event will feature over 80 speakers, including the ones from Hilton, Wyndham, Travelport, Lufthansa, Expedia, Google and from many other such organisations of repute.

For more information, click here:

Or contact:

Marco Saio
Event Director
marco@eyefortravel.com
0044 (0) 207 375 7219

Or

Rosie Akenhead
Event Director
rosie@eyefortravel.com
0044 (0) 207 375 7229