The mobile-web offers a fabulous opportunity for forward thinking travel companies to build customer loyalty. Travel companies are well positioned to exploit their booking and itinerary data to create a valuable local-search facility for their customers ...which also reinforces the travel company's brand throughout the trip.
It's getting cheaper to use the mobile web from abroad
Until now it's been so expensive to access the mobile web from abroad that it's been pointless for travel companies to invest in creating a mobile web-experience for their customers. But under pressure from EU Telco commissioner Vivianne Reding, most recently at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, operators have been told to reduce their data roaming charges significantly by July 2008 or face regulation. Sensing the way the wind is blowing, many operators have bowed to the inevitable and have already started to reduce their prices.
This is great news for travel companies, because there are a whole host of ways they can enhance their customer's travel experience using mobile services .. and a simple place to start is by offering customers a location-aware mobile search facility.
Without location, mobile search is hit and miss
Unlike with traditional web-search, on the mobile web, searchers are usually looking for something very specific so understanding the location and context of the person conducting the search are prerequisite to delivering quality results.
And, lets face it mobile search today offers a pretty poor user experience.
For example, I recently typed 'cinema' into Google's mobile search and the first result was a listing of movie times for a cinema in Singapore ... wonderful, apart from I was in the UK. The answer was to use Google's local search mode and enter my location manually, but let's face it life's too short ...
Location is hot ...
Everyone wants to improve the quality of search results and deliver better targeted ads to mobile users, so, it's not surprising that there's lots of noise around location based services at the moment - where the user doesn't have to manually input their location into their handset.
Google are very excited about the potential of mobile advertising. And, it's no surprise that their Android project includes GPS location technology in its specification.
Note: Network operators can already locate a phone to a cell level, which is accurate enough for most search applications. And, with the users permission a search provider can access this information, but as usual mobile operators made this service so expensive that very few service providers use it.
... but context is critical too
However, location on it's own is not enough. A relevant search also requires as much context a possible. For example, a location based service may know I'm at the airport, but why am I there? Am I meeting someone? Am I flying? And, if I'm flying, where to, when and for how long will I be away?
Travel companies already know location and context
Travel companies already have a huge advantage in this area. They know people's travel plans and timings ... which creates some great location and context data to feed into a mobile search.
And, travel companies have a relationship with their customers, so it's easy for them to get the customer's permission to use their personal information (location and context) to deliver better search results.
With all these advantages, their is a fantastic opportunity for travel companies to work with white-label search providers (e.g Medio , JumpTap) to deliver a great mobile search experience for their customers.
However, mobile search is only one way in which travel companies can use mobile services to enhance their customers' travel experience. In my next posting, I'll look at the bigger picture of using mobile to deliver relevant, contextual information to travellers while they're on the move.
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