IN-DEPTH: As the first quarter is about to get over, EyeforTravel assesses how the industry is working on ways to devise an optimal strategy for mobile phones

Published: 25 Mar 2011

IN-DEPTH: As the first quarter is about to get over, EyeforTravel assesses how the industry is working on ways to devise an optimal strategy for mobile phones

By Ritesh Gupta

Tablets, mobile media buys, HTML5…the travel industry continues to explore these pertinent issues when it comes to budgeting and planning for mobile website enhancements and mobile marketing initiatives.

2011 is expected to be a huge year for planning and booking travel on mobile phones and tablets. A section of the industry expects mobile usage to continue to increase with a focus on speed, increased and ease of usability, and guest’s expectation of full brand.com web functionality in the mobile environment. Overall, travel companies, including suppliers and OTAs, are getting more sophisticated in their use of smartphone features like location to deliver a more seamless experience.

The industry expects travellers to continue to adopt smartphones and tablets (especially Android and iOS devices) at a rapid pace this year. As mobile payment instruments (i.e. in-app purchases using iTunes or PayPal or carrier billing) continue to gather steam, there’s a huge opportunity for developers and suppliers to remove friction for travellers, and, as a result, shift a significant purchase volume from the desktop Web to mobile devices.

It is being highlighted that the overlapping trends of mobile, social, and service interoperability that are driving the “traveller-centric future” are accelerating, and travellers are expected to feel more empowered than ever as 2011 progresses.

“We expect the usage of mobile phones in the travel sector to continue expanding rapidly in 2011,” Mike Putnam, director of mobile product at TripAdvisor, told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta.

Putnam added, “At TripAdvisor, we’ve seen tremendous growth in site usage across mobile platforms over the course of the past 12 months. When we first launched our mobile website in March 2010, we had roughly one million unique monthly visitors accessing TripAdvisor’s travel content through their smartphones and mobile devices. Fast forward one year, and we’re now seeing more than five million unique monthly visitors across TripAdvisor’s mobile apps and mobile website.”

He added, “As consumers continue to upgrade to more enhanced smartphones and mobile devices, we expect them to use travel applications broadly, and that these will become more integrated, social and personal over time.”

“I think we are on the cusp of something very big related to mobile booking and planning. This time last year we were excited to see booking gains but they weren’t necessarily material to management when it was compared or indexed against our broader web volume. Now however, we are projecting mobile/web mix of over 3% to 5% in our forecasts. In addition, our booking window is expanding further out which means customers aren’t just using mobile for the last minute or distressed situations. They are actually using it for planning and convenience (granted we still see a very high index of same day bookings over our other channels, but it is lower),” Bill Keen, Director, Product Management, Mobile Solutions and Emerging Products, IHG told EyeforTravel in an interview earlier this year..

Comfort level

Jeroen van Velzen, CEO of the Sound of Data, says the usage is growing at an unbelievable pace.

van Velzen’s Rotterdam-based company recently, working in conjunction with CheapTickets.nl, introduced the online travel company’s iPhone application. The most important decision, according to van Velzen, was to focus on the customer experience instead of creating a full Mobile OTA App in which the company would sell flight, hotel and cars’ inventory. This resulted in a “My Cheaptickets” service offering with a branded itinerary manager with real-time flight updates as the most important item.

“The travel sector has to understand that this is only the beginning as many factors for Warp Speed are ahead: mobile data prices are coming down, roaming fees are being fixed (T-Mobile recently announced a flat fee European data rate), the platform choices are becoming clearer and last but not least there’s quite some evidence out there that customers are willing to buy products and services using a mobile phone only…” said van Velzen.

IHG’s Keen said, “We talk constantly about usability and how form entry needs to be thought through or eliminated as much as possible and not just adapted from the web. Certainly, the utilisation of GPS through the app or browser has become common place so customers don’t have to go through the process of entering locations when they search. In addition, Google is reporting that 20% of their mobile searches are voice activated so that is a factor. I think the next stage of evolution will be where the device can eliminate redundancy with other travel aids like the credit card or room keys by consolidating them onto the deck through wallets or NFC.”

Approach

Increasingly, it is being propagated that mobile websites aren’t just enhancement to one’s regular website.

“A lot of money is being spent today to “translate” the complete online experience into a mobile experience,” says van Velzen. “If you’re not present: build your mobile website ASAP based on your mobile customer story: where and why is your customer reaching out to you on its mobile phone. In the meantime start planning and budgeting to restructure your middle tier systems: build mobile API’s to your backend or find an partner that is willing to build and maintain these API’s. Think of ways to start capturing mobile customer identification means. Thirdly plan and budget for mobile transactional opportunities: where and why would your customer willing to buy your product and how will you create a mobile (which should be relevant and personal) offering.”

For one based in Asia, Abacus International’s Brett Henry says the industry should be focusing on mobile specific websites, iOS and Android, with more emphasis on mobile specific site strategy rather than simply app strategy.

“The travel industry is pushing innovation at an amazing rate in the mobile space. Newest on the block are the new HTML5 mobile specific websites where you deliver an application experience without having to have downloaded a provider specific app,” Henry said. When it comes to budgeting and planning, he said, “Depends on which market and which area of the travel business you are in. However mobile is critical to business so regardless of the market or segment if you don’t have a mobile specific investment line you're in trouble. That said you need to be smart, prioritize and pursue the high value opportunities first.”

Adjustment

With rapid advancements in mobile technology, the lines between mobile apps and mobile websites are disappearing. Newer, more sophisticated mobile devices, mobile operating systems and mobile browsers have enhanced the quality of the mobile web browsing experience tremendously.

“We originally started off our mobile efforts as a pure mobile web player thinking it would naturally go in that direction, but there is no doubt mobile applications have been a very big part of our volume growth,” said IHG’s Keen.

“However, device fragmentation is a recurring topic for us as we do want to make good use of the native features of phones and optimise the customer experience to ease user tasks. However, we don’t have unlimited resources and budget so we are focusing on what our mobile site analytics are telling us – which devices and operating systems are most commonly visiting our sites and in what countries and languages. We then combine that with what we are see occurring in the app marketplace and focus building apps for those with the highest adoption. For all other devices, we make sure that the mobile site renders optimally for them and drive them there.”

Keeping it simple

Consumers are increasingly using wireless devices for not only searching and booking travel, but they are also exploring locations in a much deeper and richer way. As far as the mobile activity is concerned, a section of the industry believes one should focus on driving unique experiences, which will eventually lead to channel preference.

TripAdvisor’s Putnam says, “We believe the more tools you can put at the fingertips of travellers through their smartphones and mobile devices, the more likely they are to turn to your app for their own travels. First and foremost, apps need to have unique value propositions for travellers.”

In the case of TripAdvisor, the company believes its more than 45 million traveller reviews and opinions for hotels, restaurants, and attractions is a key differentiator for its app.

“We’ve also added other unique features, like “virtual tours” of destinations for our iPad app and our award-winning flight search tool, to give travellers even more information right at their fingertips,” Putnam said.

The key with mobile apps, according to Putnam, is to keep it simple, and focus on what a user wants most. The more focused and helpful the app is, the more likely it is to be utilised by travellers.

Marketing

Hotel companies plan to test and build out more capability related to mobile marketing inclusive of ad serving across networks and within their owned media with a focus on location aware targeting, utilising of QR codes and sms for acquisition and potentially some carrier based solutions.

Kerry Kennedy, VP e-Commerce, Omni Hotels, says, “I believe these are interesting projects to add to the mix of an overall comprehensive mobile marketing strategy. I think that it is important for hotels to consider the key reasons guests book from a particular brand and enhance their mobile sites with functionality that leverage those reasons to keep the guest coming back to the site as well as present the brand voice the customer has come to expect.”

“QR codes are interesting and noteworthy, but only if used in a way that brings value to the customer. And mobile device scanners still have some idiosyncrasies about them which can sometimes cause user frustration. It’s important that if you use a QR code to ensure that it brings added value to the guest by being easier and faster to use than directing them to some other source, or provides them with extras that they could not get through another channel,” he said.

According to Kennedy, emergent marketing channels like QR codes and SMS need to fit the larger overarching strategy of the four marketing P’s (product, place, price, promotion) for a brand while doing so in the new digital channels.

A company of IHG’s stature is clear that from a booking point of view, it is very much focused on its international expansion especially in markets where the mobile ecosystem is more advanced (such as Japan and China). In addition, it is also looking at ways to better support emerging devices such as tablets, Windows 7 along with developing a tiered mobile web experience. The company also believes it needs to define a better strategy for corporate account and managed travel.