News

Would You Book Travel on a Smart Phone?

Tweet April 19th, 2012 written by James in News

Following this week’s Eye for Travel TDS Europe exhibition, one of the key points was the colossal increase in the use of mobile technology in travel bookings.

This isn’t new news, it is however exciting and exponentially gathering momentum.

According to Go-Gulf.com, a website and technology design company, 89% of smart phone users are on their device during the day, 84% of which have used them to browse the internet.

At the Travel Distribution Summit in London, Yelp.com’s Dave Scheine noted that twice as many surveyed customers have researched travel on a mobile website rather than a downloadable app.

This suggests that the consumer either don’t want to tie themselves to a particular provider, or that the mobile apps developed for the specific travel brands don’t offer the full range of options seen on the website.

The biggest fear for using any mobile device abroad is the roaming charges, especially for data-downloads. During peak holiday-seasons, there are always commercials advertising misleading deals, combined with horror stories of thousand-pound phone bills of users that “just wanted to watch a football match” on their phone/tablet/laptop.

To make the use of these devices truly mainstream, website developers have to concentrate more on mobile content and providers have to be on the same page, being completely open and providing charges, data limits and a service that will attract a wider audience whether home or abroad.

Globally, there are over 5 billion mobile phones, while only 1.08 billion are smart phones (at the time of the survey). The opportunities for the growth in the mobile website industry are endless.

Would you book a holiday using your smart phone or do you prefer to sit with your friendly travel agent? Let us know in the comments form below or via @puregenie on Twitter. Don’t forget to join our LinkedIn group to keep informed of new jobs, travel, digital and online news.

No comments