Giving shape to your mobile strategy

Over the last 12 months, some interesting and varied opinions have emerged about the way mobile phones should be perceived as a tool in the hotel industry.

Should it be related with being more about a service tool or offering `manage my booking’ and check-in functions plus accessing travel information such as hotel maps and directions? 

For a section of the industry, the mobile phone is functional. That is why marketers are treading carefully on how they use the phone for guest/customer contact. They are very much focused on how to gain the loyalty and advocacy of their guests. 

“If we can provide a service that makes their travel and stay experience easier and more convenient, those initiatives further differentiate our brand. We should not underestimate that delivering services to the guest via their mobile device becomes an important touch point and in essence more strongly engages the customer with the brand, and done right, becomes the new form of immediate two-way communication,” Linda Anderson, VP - marketing, Red Lion Hotels Corporation said during EyeforTravel’s Online Marketing in Travel  conference held in Chicago last year. Such initiatives are permission-based. 

It is also pointed out that there is a fixation with mobile as a reservations distribution channel. 

“In more developed markets, the role mobile plays is more about service tool, offering manage my booking and check in functions plus accessing travel information including such as hotel maps and directions,” Gerry Samuels, founder & executive director, MTT, had said last year.  

“However, in some developing markets, where mobile Internet is `the’ Internet, we are seeing the development of mobile commerce, i.e. people making reservations on mobiles.” 

Intermediaries strengthen mobile offerings 

Clearly now there is a critical mass of good quality mobile devices connected to the mobile Internet at decent speeds to support the use of mobile travel services. 

In addition, mobile search search engines such as Google. 

For an intermediary, if it doesn’t have a mobile optimised site, then it is not going to rank well in Google Mobile, so it won’t rank well in searches. 

Only last month, Kayak.com had released its iPhone application. The application, now available in the iTunes App Stores, is free for all users. Kayak.com’s application provides iPhone users the ability to search, compare and purchase airfare. It is also offering hotel search, with options to sort results by “cheap” to search by price, “close” to find a hotel near the airport or “classy” to filter by star rating. 

An abridged version of the popular Kayak Buzz feature is also included in the new application. Renamed “Trends” for the iPhone, this feature lets travellers see best fares to a destination as found by other Kayak.com users from their home airport.

According to Faisal Galaria, MD – International, Kayak.com, the mobile experience should be different to the sedentary PC experience. 

“In particular, mobile has the benefit of being able to offer location-based services as well as being a personal device that’s with you all the time. That offers some intriguing possibilities,” says Galaria. 

Regarding the search for a room on mobile phones, it is felt that companies can’t drive consumers to book a hotel room in a certain location just because a hotel has a distressed inventory sale. In this context, it is pointed out that event driven inventory distribution will be the biggest opportunity for mobile marketing. 

On the same, Galaria said, “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. Mobile marketing of special offers, however, could be an interesting way of inducing spontaneous booking especially for things like weekend breaks.” 

For its part, EyeforTravel has announced The School of Mobile initiative, introduced to educate the travel and tourism industry about the integration of mobile technology into distribution strategies and the use of mobile travel applications. 

The Mobile Zone @ EyeforTravel's Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2009
 
As part of its`The School of Mobile' initiative, EyeforTravel will conduct interactive seminars on Mobile in Travel in the Mobile Zone located within the Travel Distribution Summit Europe exhibition area.
The Summit will take place on May 19 and 20 in London this year.

For more information, click here: http://events.eyefortravel.com/school-of-mobile/  

Or contact:

Amy Scarth
Head of Research, EyeforTravel
amy@eyefortravel.com
+44(0) 207 3757545