StreamThru

Mobile is big. Where does it fit within your strategy?

2009-11-09T14:57:00.007Z

Mobile and travel were made for each other, so isn't it time to consider where mobile fits within your strategy? Because, mobile is big, and it's getting bigger. To see just how big, consider the latest mobile phone statistics from Q3, 2009 ...

We've known for sometime that SMS (text messaging) is used by far more people than email. SMS now has over 3 billion active users (76% of all mobile phone users), compared to around 800 million email users. SMS is more immediate: the average SMS is read within 15 minutes, whereas with email it's around 24 hours. And, less than 10% of SMS messages are spam, compared to over 65% of emails.

So, SMS is big ... and, the mobile Internet is becoming big too ... Yankee Group says 31% of mobile phone subscribers use the mobile Internet - that works out at 1.2 billion users, worldwide. And, Strategy Analytics says that 20% of US and Western European mobile users access the Internet from their mobile phone at least once a week.

Smartphones, a category still dominated by Nokia, but that also includes the rapidly growing Apple iPhone and RIM Blackberry models, accounted for 14% (source: Canalys, Strategy Analytics) of all handset sales in Q3, 2009. Over 45% of Smartphones sold in the period featured a touchscreen. And, the best known of the touchscreen phones, the iPhone, now accounts for almost 1% of all mobile phones (although usage is heavily US biased. 33% of all iPhones sold were in the US).

So, it seems that more people are using their mobile phones more often to do more things. And, when it comes to data access, there's no doubt that people use their mobile phones differently to their PC's ... but the fact remains, there is a ready and significant audience of mobile users willing to engage with you when they're out and about.

Where should travel companies start with mobile?

The key is to ensure your mobile projects are customer rather than technology driven.

So, tempting as it may be to commission or build an iPhone app, this isn't necessarily the best starting point. If your business objectives are to use mobile to help enhance service levels, boost revenues, or reduce customer service costs, then you should be looking to reach the largest audience possible and SMS and mobile Internet currently tick this box better than applications. Applications certainly have a place, but I'd recommend getting the basics right first.

Within the travel industry, this is an approach that seems to have been adopted by Orbitz:

Orbitz.com spokesman Brian Hoyt said that his company still hasn't joined in the iPhone application craze, but instead relies on its mobile phone tools it launched in 2006. Hoyt said that the company may release its application in 2010. "Just because you don't have an app on the iPhone doesn't mean you missed out on the market," he said. "We're still trying to find that killer app that gains higher adoption."

Where is this "killer app" for mobile in travel?

Let's not forget that for travellers, whilst researching when and where to travel, choosing who to travel with, and booking their travel are all important ... the main event is the travel experience itself. Yet, incredibly, most travellers have zero contact with their travel company when they're travelling. Putting aside search and book (where many have focused, but which I still think is at best a niche opportunity in the short to medium term), mobile now offers a real chance for you to connect with customers, post-booking, in the immediate build up to and during their trip.

Today, everyone carries their mobile with them when they travel - it's their personal device for personalised interactions. So, why not make use of mobile to provide your customers with timely, relevant, contextual information that they will value and will want to return to time and again during their trip? Implemented correctly, this type of mobile experience will help you to enhance customer service, extend existing ancillary sales windows, and create new ancillary sales opportunities.

Isn't this something you should be offering to your customers?

Travel companies can learn from mobile mistakes in other industries

2009-10-02T10:46:00.004+01:00

Over on iMedia Connection, Jordan Greene provides some great advice for any brand considering it's first mobile project and illustrates his points using case studies from well known brands including Foot Locker and Ralph Lauren. Although the studies are from other industries, nevertheless these are lessons that every travel company should heed.

Jordan suggests that many companies who've gone down the mobile path have been seduced by the hype and have chosen to invest in a branded app, rather than develop a solid mobile strategy first. Often this decision is driven from high up in the organisation, where the assumption is held that everyone has an iPhone or Blackberry and therefore it's imperative that the brand has a presence on one or both of these platforms. But, Jordan points out that the reality in the US (and I'm sure in Europe too) is that over 75% of mobile users do not have smart-phones.

Jordan also suggests that many brands having decided they need a mobile presence, then decide to work with teams who don't understand mobile and are learning on the job. My take on this is that Jordan is referring to brands giving the mobile project to their design agency to run with.

We've seen examples of this in travel, and particularly with airlines producing first generation mobile web-sites. These sites often look great, but to what purpose? Who is the target audience? When and under what circumstances will they use the site? How will the site generate a return on (the one would assume, considerable) investment?

Yet, mobile and travel were made for each other.

Mobile offers a phenomenal opportunity for travel brands to engage their customers when they are travelling. It's an opportunity to share relevant, timely information which customers truly value and to tap into the impulsive behaviour of travellers to boost ancillary revenue. This is mobile CRM for travel companies.

But, creating this type of dialogue requires thought - it's harder than building a first generation mobile web-site or mobile application. It requires domain knowledge. You need to understand the traveller's itinerary. You need to understand why the person is travelling. And, using this knowledge you need to preempt what information the traveller needs now ... at this current stage of their trip. It's about aggregating useful information, then filtering this information to deliver a highly personal, contextual experience.

This is the true value of mobile in travel.

So, yes engaging customers in a compelling, personal dialogue takes more effort than building an unpersonalised, generic, albeit pretty looking first generation mobile web-site. But, this is exactly what smarter, forward thinking travel companies are looking to do. They're looking at where and how mobile fits into their overall customer contact strategy. They see that mobile allows them to bridge the communication gap with their customers when they are travelling. And, they know that by bridging this gap they can enhance their service and boost their revenue ... and this gives them a return on their mobile investment.

Mobile CRM for travel companies

2009-09-25T13:36:00.003+01:00

This year we've seen increasing coverage of 'mobile' in the travel press and at industry conferences, and it seems that many travel companies have dipped their toe in the water with mobile projects (or are planning to do something shortly).

This is great. But, my concern is that once travel companies have done their first mobile project, perhaps by implementing a non-personalised, first generation mobile web-site (e.g. an airline providing timetables, flight status, etc or a hotel allowing people to browse its properties and perhaps book a room), they think they've ticked the mobile box and that they can move on and forget about it.

But, mobile is so much more than this. Mobile offers the most personal way of communicating with your customers through a device they carry with them all of the time. It is the ultimate 1:1 marketing tool. As such, it should be embedded into every travel companies contact strategy.

Saying you've done mobile, is like sending confirmation emails to your customers and deciding that you've done email. If you took this attitude, you wouldn't send email newsletters to your existing customers, you wouldn't use email to promote special offers, you wouldn't email customers to notify them of changes to their booking.

And, it's the same with mobile.

I think as the market matures, travel companies will develop a clearer view of all the places where mobile technology can help their business. For me, the sweet spot for mobile is building personalised dialogues with customers in the immediate lead up to and during their trip - this is "Mobile CRM".

For customers, the trip was their reason for booking, yet in many cases during the trip itself they have no contact with their travel company. Mobile CRM can bridge this gap and used well it creates new touch points that customers really value. These new touch points enhance the customers' experience, enhance their perception of your brand, and create new ancillary sales opportunities by reaching the customer at their point of need.

But, doing this isn't easy - you need to find and aggregate content relevant to your customer's trip, you need to filter and personalise this content, so they just see information relevant to the current phase of their trip; you need the ability to target offers for ancillaries at the right time, so the offer is useful rather than an annoying ad; and you need all this to work on any phone in the customer's preferred language.

Doing this isn't easy, but with the right help, it can be done and those travel companies who are first to embrace Mobile CRM will gain an edge over their competitors.

SMS still has big role in mobile-travel as a "push" technology

2009-08-11T12:54:00.004+01:00

A recent SAS press release highlighted how they're using technology to make their passengers journey smoother. Many of these innovations are mobile related. For example, they are doing some nice stuff around mobile check-in and supporting mobile bar-coded boarding passes (mBCBP).

And, it's good to see SAS offering SMS services alongside their mobile-web portal. It's all to easy to get carried away by the hype these days and think that mobile is purely about downloadable applications. The reality is: SMS is still the only mobile technology that allows you to reach near 100% of your customers ... although let's not forget that mobile-web adoption is growing apace, doubling in the US in the past year.

But, back to SMS, and specifically what role does it have to play in the mobile travel experience?

Using SMS for "Pull" mobile travel services

The SAS service is a PULL service. It allows travellers to text in keywords to access timetable info, booking details, etc - which sounds like a great, customer-focused idea.

But ... a couple of years ago we did some small scale trials of this type of service for ourselves ...

We asked people to text in a keyword (e.g. EAT, NIGHTLIFE) to get activity suggestions for their destination. However, we soon abandoned this experiment, because people simply didn't use the service. Feedback from customers told us that there was nothing particularly wrong with the service, it was just they either didn't think to use the service when they were travelling or they couldn't remember the keywords. And, off-the-record conversations with travel companies who've tried similar services indicate that they've seen similar underwhelming results.

Keywords work best when they're a response to a promotion (e.g. a billboard encouraging you to text BROCHURE to a short-code) - and the SAS service may well be promoted in this way (e.g using in-airport advertising, and through promotion in their in-flight magazine) which would give it an advantage. But, in general, for a travel service, my comments about first generation mobile-web applications apply - we're simply asking the traveller to work too hard relative to the value of information provided.

When it comes to using SMS as a PULL technology with travellers, the only exception we've found is with an "any questions answered" type service, where people text in free form enquiries and get an answer back from a human expert. We've used this successfully with our destination assistance service which provides answers to questions about the local area, language translation, and a live interpreter in an emergency. I think this works because we're not asking people to work too hard ... they don't have to remember too much and the value they get out of the interaction outweighs the effort of sending the text.

Using SMS for "Push" mobile travel services

However, I believe the real value SMS brings to any mobile travel service is as a PUSH technology. SMS is perfectly adapted to the role of pro-actively sending information (e.g. itinerary reminders, flight changes, boarding calls, delay notifications, daily weather forecasts, links to mobile-web applications, etc) to travellers when they're on the move - and, in this context, no other technology can match the reach or reliability of SMS, which is why I think it should form a part of every travel companies customer contact strategy.

Mobile applications: What travel companies need to know.

2009-07-16T15:54:00.002+01:00

Mobile applications have been around for ages, but their meteoric rise into popular public consciousness over the past year or so is largely thanks to the iPhone and the success of Apple's app store. Apple made it easy for the non-technical to download and install applications onto their handset. And, now, with all the hype surrounding mobile apps, it seems that every company wants to have one. So, for a travel company considering its mobile strategy, going down the mobile app route is a no-brainer, right?

Well, actually, it's not quite that simple.

If we stay with the iPhone as our example, a recent ComScore survey says that 3.5% of mobile media users in the UK own an iPhone and that 75% of those people are males aged between 18 and 44.

So, even allowing for the rapid growth in iPhone owners, an application developed for the iPhone is still targeting a niche market. And, with contract rates of up to $1000 USD per day for a decent iPhone developer - it could cost you a lot of money to keep a small number of customers happy.

Most travel companies I've spoken to want to use the mobile channel to reach the majority of their customers. So, with an app strategy that means you'll need apps for Apple, Blackberry, Nokia, Anroid, Windows Mobile, etc, etc. All are different, all require development work, some handset manufacturers (e.g. Nokia) have multiple operating systems ... so, going down the apps route is an expensive option in terms of time and development resource.

An alternative is to connect with your customers when they're on the move by creating a mobile web-site.

Using the mobile-web you can still offer a rich media experience to your customers and mobile web content is accessible from pretty much any handset with a data connection. With the mobile-web you don't have to worry about how you get your 'application' onto the user's handset, nor do you have to worry about how you roll out upgrades to your software.

However, the mobile-web experience will never be as slick as a downloaded application. Mobile web content is slower and consumes more bandwidth, because you have to download each page individually. Whereas, with a downloaded app the graphics, page layouts and all static data are pre-installed on the handset, so you only have to download the dynamic data.

Furthermore, mobile-web sites can't provide offline access to content (e.g. itineraries), nor do they enable you to take advantage of high-end phone features like built-in GPS and compasses (e.g. for what's near me type requests).

So, which way to go?

Until we see greater consolidation of mobile phone operating systems or until cross-platform development environments (e.g. Adobe's Flash Lite) support interaction with the handset (e.g. access contacts, calendar, location), I recommend:

If you are serious about using mobile in your customer interactions (e.g. airline mobile boarding pass and mobile check-in initiatives), go down the mobile-web route. Mobile-web will enable you to reach the widest audience for the lowest cost.

If you are looking to make a PR splash, then by all means go down the app route. For example, lastminte.com's labs team have produced some really nice sample apps recently.

Finally, if you really are bitten by the app bug, then you could always develop a mobile-web site to reach the majority of your users and develop a complimentary app for your favoured handset!

At Mantic Point, we see mobile-web, applications, SMS, and even email as delivery channels. Our focus is pulling together right content, at the right time to create valuable mobile dialogues with travellers. We're agnostic to the delivery channel and we'll work with whichever technology (or more likely technologies) is most appropriate for the audience we're trying to reach.

StreamThru.com wins travel industry award

2009-06-25T15:37:00.002+01:00

We're delighted to report that StreamThru.com won the 'Best Mobile Technology' category in the TravelMole Web Awards 2009. TravelMole is the largest online community for the Travel and Tourism Industry with over 450,000 registered subscribers.

In total, the awards received over 300 nominations, and over 15,000 votes were cast by TravelMole readers to create a shortlist ( a big thank you to everyone who voted for us). Winners were chosen from the shortlist by a judging panel of travel and tourism experts consisting of Peter Healey, founder and chief executive of The Vertical Group, former Teletext MD Matt Cheevers, Helena Beard, marketing director at KBC PR and Marketing, Jérôme Moisan, Travelport general manager UK & Ireland, and Liz Craig, founder of Oneglobe Network, a boutique digital agency.

Other award winners included BMI, Holiday Autos, P&O Cruises, and Warner Leisure. And, in a strong showing for Yorkshire (we're based in Leeds) - Welcome to Yorkshire also won the Tourist Board category.

Airlines just don't get mobile

2009-06-18T16:45:00.004+01:00

Norm Rose says that airlines just don't get mobile. This got me thinking about how full-service airlines have approached mobile and particularly about their mobile-web sites or portals.

Airline mobile sites make passengers work too hard

Most airline mobile web-sites offer similar functionality and are what I'd categorise as first generation mobile web-sites. I criticised first generation sites in the mobile strategy eBook we published last year (feel free to download it, the ideas are still valid today).

Although many first generation airline sites offer good content (e.g. mobile check-in, manage my booking, flight status) they are largely a rehash (sorry ... trans-coding) of existing web-sites onto mobile. I suspect most of these airline projects have been IT initiated, rather than forming part of any broader customer communication strategy. As a result, usability is poor. In short, first generation airline sites fail because they make their users work way too hard.

For example:

I provide my details to check-in. Fair enough
Now, I want to check my flight status, so I have to re-enter the flight number
If I want to check the weather at my destination, I have to navigate through a hierarchy of continents, countries, states and cities to find my forecast
And, if I want to check out the travel guide for my destination, I have to navigate yet another hierarchy

This may be OK for casual users ... but, for the typical passenger who is travelling and probably in a hurry, this is hopelessly frustrating. Surely, the goal of a mobile site should be to help users complete a task, or access information, as quickly and smoothly as possible.

Beyond first generation airline mobile sites

There is no shortage of mobile content ... it just needs to be presented in a more usable way. For airlines, the solution is to "filter" their content to create a better customer experience.

What is filtering?

At its most basic, filtering is personalisation. For example, airlines know the travel plans of their frequent flyers and direct bookers, so for these people, why not use this information to show their flight status, weather at their destination, etc? Personalisation makes the mobile experience much more compelling. A lot of independent mobile travel sites already use personalisation - they're at least one step ahead of the airlines.

A more advanced form of filtering uses context - using knowledge of the traveller's itinerary to further filter the presented information and available tasks to what's relevant to the traveller right now.

For example:

Shortly before I travel, send me an SMS with a link my personal page on the airlines web-site. Whenever I re-visit this URL link, I get content that's relevant to the current stage of my journey ...
Pre-travel let me check-in and show me my flight status
When I'm travelling to the airport give me traffic reports and flight status
When I'm at the airport give me flight status, let me view my mobile bar-coded boarding pass, give me directions to the lounge, etc
When I'm at my destination recommend some places to eat and things to do, tell me about the weather, maybe let me book an excursion, etc.

Why go to all this trouble? Ancillary revenue!

The purpose of saving the customer time, by making the mobile dialogue much more relevant isn't entirely altruistic. Yes, it's about customer service .. but also about using the dialogue to generate ancillary revenue and this has to be done contextually to ensure that any offer is relevant and timely (e.g. offer tactical upgrades pre-check-in).

And, for any airline wanting to move quickly, our StreamThru platform offers a mobile content management server designed specifically for travel, that allows airlines to mix and match their existing mobile content (e.g. mobile check-in, mobile boarding passes) with our content to create a contextual dialogue that is timely and relevant and which adapts to the traveller's needs throughout their trip.

Mantic Point launches Twitter updates for travellers

2009-06-15T12:46:00.001+01:00

Different people have different needs when they're travelling. As a mobile travel technology innovator, we're committed to providing relevant, timely information to people, when they're on the move, in whatever format they prefer. With the popularity of Twitter, and the large number of people "tweeting" whilst they're travelling, integrating StreamThru with Twitter was a natural step for us, and complements the existing text message (SMS) and mobile-web services we offer.

With StreamThru for Twitter, we pro-actively send travellers a number of timely reminder and reassurance messages for their flight. We also provide them with a personal URL link which gives them access to other travel related information. Travellers can re-visit this link at any time when they're travelling to access the latest information about their trip. And, uniquely to StreamThru, this information adapts to a traveller's needs at each stage of their trip providing anything from airport guides to weather forecasts.

To try out StreamThru for Twitter, follow StreamThru and check out the instructions on the StreamThru web-site.

Introducing free mobile itineraries and services for SME travel companies

2009-06-04T11:08:00.004+01:00

We've recently launched a number of enhancements to the StreamThru platform to help small and medium sized travel agents and tour operators who want to provide a mobile itinerary and mobile travel information to their customers. Now, SME travel companies can offer their own-branded mobile service to their customers at no cost to them or their customers. It's a really simple way for travel companies to reinforce their brand with customers when they're travelling by providing travellers with a valuable service.

The mobile service saves travellers time by pulling together relevant travel information into one place and making it accessible through a mobile-web site on their mobile phone. And, who doesn't carry a mobile phone when they're travelling these days?

At any time when they're on the move, travellers can access a mobile version of their itinerary and context sensitive information relevant to the current stage of their trip. For example: the traveller may see flight status and traffic reports when they're travelling to the airport, whereas they'd see weather forecasts and travel guides when they're at their destination.

To get started, SME travel companies either:

Add a widget to their web-site (no coding required), where the customer can tell the mobile service about their travel plans

Or, to save the customer from re-entering data, the travel company can add a check-box to their booking process asking customers to opt-in and they then pass the customer's itinerary to us through the StreamThru API (application programming interface)

If you want to see the widget in action, take a look at the example we've created on Facebook.

To sign-up, SME travel companies need to register as a StreamThru partner.

Once you've registered follow the on-screen instructions to customise the branding of the widget and mobile-web site and if you want to pass booking data through our API, you'll be able to download our API instruction guide.

Visit us at eyeForTravel Travel Distribution Summit

2009-05-12T17:37:00.003+01:00

We're exhibiting at the eyeForTravel Travel Distribution Summit in London on the 19th and 20th May. If you're attending the event come and visit us on stand #30 - we'll happily discuss your mobile strategy and show you a demonstration of the latest version of our white-label, StreamThru mobile travel assistant.

We're also presenting one of the School of Mobile seminars at the Mobile in Travel Zone- it's at 2pm on the 19th May. We'll be looking at how travel companies can use mobile to generate extra revenue post-booking. We'll share some of our experiences of running mobile travel services for the past 3 years and we'll go through some case studies where we have first or second hand experience. Attendance to these seminars is free for travel companies.

iPhone mobile downloads show travel industry the way

2009-04-15T10:37:00.000+01:00

Travel brands who are pondering their mobile strategy and wondering "what do my customers want from mobile when they're travelling?" would be well advised to take a look at Norm Rose's recent posting - Travel Technology: Top Apple Travel Downloads

Norm looks at the top 5 paid and free iPhone downloads in the travel category. The top paid app is a flight tracker. Services recommending local restaurants take up 2 of the top 5 paid and 2 of the top 5 free slots.

This insight coupled with popularity of itinerary aggregation applications like TripIt suggests their is a real appetite amongst travellers for useful mobile services whether delivered as applications (downloads), over the mobile-web, or by text messaging.

The learning for travel brands is that travellers want mobile to:

Keep them in control (e.g. flight alerts)

Provide advice in unfamiliar situations (e.g. restaurant recommendations)

Save them time (e.g.centralised, electronic itinerary)

Norm laments the absence of major travel brands from the mobile app stores - I'd go further and suggest that very few travel brands have a coherent mobile strategy of any sort - leaving their customers go out and source their own mobile services. What a missed opportunity.

Yet, there is still a big role for travel brands in the mobile space, particuarly those brands who collect booking data. Many of the mobile applications travellers are downloading today are stove pipe applications that do only one thing. Yet, travellers have many different information needs at different stages of their journey, so do they really want to download multiple appliactions for flight alerts, restaurant reccomendations, itinerary reminders, weather forecasts, travel guides, airport guides, etc, etc? This leads to what Yahoo! are terming 'App Fatigue' and is why they've adopted an aggregation strategy witht their mobile services.

Aggregation is an opportunity for travel brands too. They should provide mobile services that support and reflect the changing needs of travellers throughout their journey. This way they'll enhance customer service and create new direct and indirect anciallary sales opportunities.

And, to really maximise take-up of mobile services, travel brands should consider that different people have different needs depending on why they're travelling, where they're travelling to, and how long they'll be away. The end goal should be to tailor mobile services at each stage of the journey to the needs of key customer segments.

The good news for travel brands is they can easily exploit their booking data to deliver these types of mobile service, with minimal impact on their existing systems. For example, our StreamThru platform takes a booking data feed and then uses a simple rules-based model to configure what mobile content gets served to travellers at each stage of their trip, depending on their profile. The result is a relevant, personalised mobile dialogue that travellers return to time and again throughout their trip.

StreamThru powering Air New Zealand's Boarding Buddy mobile service

2009-03-27T16:16:00.003Z

We've just launched a new service for Air New Zealand, called Boarding Buddy.

Boarding Buddy is powered by our StreamThru mobile travel assistant platform and enables Air New Zealand to enhance customer service and provide passengers with up-to-the-minute, personalised flight alerts direct to their mobile phone through SMS

Boarding Buddy is currently available for passengers flying on Air New Zealand flights from London Heathrow Airport.

You can find up more by visiting the Boarding Buddy web-site.

Visit us at Passenger Terminal Expo 2009

2009-03-18T12:00:00.000Z

We're attending Passenger Terminal Expo next week (24 - 26 March) at the ExCel centre in London.

If you're there too, why not drop by and say hello? We're exhbiting on Cisco's stand (1300), where we'll be demonstrating how the latest version of our StreamThru platform can help travel companies build enduring customer relationships and boost ancillary revenue by engagaing travellers in a timely, personalised and relevant mobile dialogue.

And, if you are registered for the conference, Mike Atherton, our MD, is speaking on the 26 March on the Commercial Development, Strategy and Retail Revenues track. His talk is at 13:25 and is entitled: "Who's flying from your airport today?"
Hope to see you there!

EU caps mobile data roaming charges from July 2009

2009-03-11T14:17:00.001Z

Viviane Reding, the EU's Telecoms Commissioner has announced that from July 2009 new rules will come into force capping data charges for mobile phone users when they travel to another EU country. Ms Reding said that these new rules are "very good news for consumers".

Wholesale prices of data will be capped at €0.50 per megabyte. Currently, the average retail price is around €4 per megabyte.

Although the mobile operators don't like these new rules, lower prices should help to increase mobile-web usage. I believe that high data charges have hampered the growth of the mobile-web, so I think these new EU regulations are great news for us, because they'll encourage more travellers to use the mobile-web version of our StreamThru mobile travel assistance service!

Mantic Point launches first personalised, context aware mobile travel assistant

2009-02-13T09:24:00.004Z

I've been at the Travel Technology Show in London this week, where we a launched the new mobile-web version of StreamThru.

StreamThru is different from the first generation of mobile travel applications because it is the first personalised, time-sensitive and context-aware mobile travel assistant. The information StreamThru presents to the traveller changes throughout the traveller's journey to ensure its relevance. We achieve this relevant by understanding and following the travellers itinerary.

For the traveller, StreamThru saves time, because it pulls together the information they need at the current stage of their trip into one central place (e.g. if a traveller intends to drive to the airport, before they set-off StreamThru shows them if their flight is on time and whether there are any traffic delays en-route; when they're at their destination it shows them a weather forecast and a travel guide).

The service is currently available as a beta - you can try it for free at: www.streamthru.com.

We're encouraging early users of the service to provide feedback on what works and what doesn't so we can enhance the service prior to a full roll-out. And, we've got lots of ideas in the pipeline for new functionality to create an even better experience for travellers.

StreamThru is available as a white-label service to travel brands.

For travel brands, StreamThru enables them to engage their customers in a 1:1 dialogue when they're travelling. Previously this level of customer intimacy has been the sole preserve of tour operators with their in-resort holiday reps. The StreamThru dialogue offers the same benefits as a holiday rep: improve customer satisfaction by keeping travellers informed with useful information and increasing revenue by tapping into impulse spend at destination.

StreamThru creates lots of opportunity for travel brands to extend existing ancillary sales windows to target services at the point of need and it also opens up many new ancillary sales options.

You can try out StreamThru for yourself - for free - by registering and adding details of your trip at: www.streamthru.com

Interest growing in mobile travel applications

2009-01-13T11:02:00.004Z

We're not even half way through January, so it's encouraging to see so many people writing about mobile travel technology.

In his predictions for 2009, Tim Hughes of The BOOT, suggests that "2009 will not be the year of mobile in the travel industry". This sparked off a healthy debate in his blog post comments, to which Tim replied, expanding on his initial comments:

1) He feels that the opportunity for mobile isn't around search and booking, it's around "destination/location based services, concierge like advisory services and trip organisation"

2) For mobile to be successful it needs distribution support from the big booking companies

3) He feels travel brands will have too many other things on their plate in 2009 to spend time implementing mobile technology.

My response to Tim's' points:

1) Agree. The main theme of this blog is that mobile is all about creating a meaningful dialogue with the traveller. In the past, it's only tour operators with in-resort reps who've had the privilege of engaging customers whilst they're travelling. Mobile creates the possibility for all travel brands to have an ongoing conversation with their customers.

2) Agree. I've mentioned repeatedly on this blog that travel brands are best placed to offer mobile services because they have the direct relationship with the traveller and they have the booking data. Booking data contains the travellers itinerary ... and the itinerary is key to delivering a meaningful, personalised and contextual mobile dialogue that the traveller will value.

3) Disagree. I think savvy travel brands will look to "launch and learn" mobile services this year. And, if they can find innovative partners to work with to take on the heavy lifting (taking pressure off their own resources), then mobile can deliver incremental revenue by extending the sales window for existing ancillaries and creating new opportunities to tap into impulse spending at the traveller's destination (e.g. by promoting tours and activities).

Tim's article encouraged Norm Rose to pen a full response on his blog - Norm disagrees with Tim's initial assertion and points to the growth in smart phone adoption, particularly with frequent business travellers, as an indicator of the increasing demand for mobile travel applications. Norm also points out that these applications will be location and contextually relevant - again a key theme of this blog - if you know where the traveller is, why they are there, and how long they will be there for, you can deliver highly relevant information to them that enhances their travel experience.

Norm's views are echoed in yesterday's post from Mike McCormick of Hudson Crossing (PDF, 142KB) - his 7th prediction for 2009 is that "mobile will begin to emerge, converge and finally arrive in travel". Mike argues that smart phones (and specifically, the iPhone and Blackberry Storm) will have a "catalytic effect upon the use of mobile travel applications". He states that mobile applications "will make the act of travelling itself easier and more enjoyable".

In our own predictions for 2009, we suggested that 2009 is the "launch and learn" year for mobile in the travel industry. It seems that more and more people get what mobile can offer to travel brands and to travellers. My hope is that by the end of 2009 travel brands will have a clear idea of what they need to do with mobile, so that in 2010 mobile travel applications will enter the mainstream.

Welcome boost for mobile travel services from the EU

2008-12-03T11:17:00.003Z

One of our recently published "top 5 predictions for 2009" for the mobile travel market received a welcome boost from the EU Telecoms Commissioner.

We're predicting that 2009 will be a "launch and learn" year as the more innovative travel brands look to enhance customer service and boost ancillary sales using the mobile-web.

One of the barriers to mobile-web adoption in travel has always been the high costs of data roaming charges. Historically, if you used your mobile phone to access the mobile web when you were overseas, you faced some very steep charges from your network operator.

However, from July 2009 things are set to get a whole lot better in Europe. EU telecoms ministers have backed plans by the EU Telecommunications Commissioner, Viviane Reding, to cap roaming charges for text messages and downloading data.

Research by TNS shows that 20% of people questioned were confused about data roaming charges, and consequently this stopped them using their phone overseas. For service providers and travel brands these new regulations should make it a lot easier to inform customers of the costs they'll incur accessing mobile-web based services from abroad - which should help to drive the uptake of mobile travel services.

75% of travel suppliers recognise that mobile will change how they communicate with customers

2008-11-14T12:47:00.002Z

Back in 2005 and 2006 we used to invite airlines and airport operators to a series of events we ran at Rolls-Royce's headquarters in London. During these events the airports and airlines could walk through a technology demonstrator showcasing our vision of the future airport experience.

Mobile technology was a big part of this demonstration, and feedback from the airlines and airports who visited us helped us to develop the StreamThru platform as it is today.

During the demonstration, we showed how you could create a mobile dialogue with customers to enhance the travel experience and make money for the airline or airport.

The main money-making areas we identified were:

1) Using the mobile channel to create one last chance to sell distressed inventory (e.g. tactical upgrades, travel insurance)

2) Selling a limited amount of relevant, third party advertising space (e.g. to airport concessions and brands interested in advertising to travellers)

3) Creating new ancillary sales opportunities at the customer's destination (in the demonstration we used to show that if you knew the weather forecast was for rain in the customer's destination you could offer them the chance to pre-book a taxi and beat the queues)

4) Charging customers to access your mobile services

However, one thing we were clear about in 2005/6 and stand by today is that we don't expect to see people rushing off to book flights, holidays, and hotels using their mobiles any time soon.

So, it was refreshing to see EyeForTravel's recent survey of 800 travel suppliers which revealed that "more than three-quarters felt that mobile will end up changing the way their business communicates with customers" and encouragingly respondents felt that "customer service had the highest viability, with mobile as a payment platform seen as the least viable. Customer acquisition was also seen as unrealistic aim for mobile devices."

With the travel industry recognising the important role mobile has to play in delivering a better customer experience, the challenge now is to develop mobile services that make sense to the customer. This means creating a mobile dialogue that:

Focuses on the whole trip, not just individual elements

Personalised the experience, so customers don't have to work hard to get to the information they need

StreamThru powers WAYN.com's new mobile update service

2008-10-21T10:30:00.004+01:00

A few weeks ago, we launched a new white-label version of StreamThru with WAYN.com. WAYN.com is the largest travel focused social networking site with over 14 million members.
Through this new service, WAYN.com members can now sign-up for flight updates and daily weather forecasts when they're travelling.

In an earlier post, I talked about how owners of high-volume travel related web-sites should introduce mobile concierge services to improve customer service and to provide a point of differentiation. Our partnership with WAYN.com is an example of how this can work in practice.

With the launch of the WAYN.com white-label service, Mantic Point now provides mobile concierge services for major players in 3 key areas of the travel market:

Airline. easyJet fly over 40 million passengers per year
Airport. BAA hosts 67 million passengers per year at London Heathrow
High volume travel-related web-site. WAYN has over 14 million members

Use ad-funding to create entry level mobile travel services

2008-10-01T15:51:00.004+01:00

Travel brands who want to assist their customers when they're travelling by offering a mobile concierge service, should take a look at our latest news release:

Mantic Point survey shows over 90% of travellers accept ad-funded SMS flight information service

The survey, completed by over 3,000 airline passengers, shows that travellers will accept mobile advertising where its part of a wider service that they value.

This means you can offer your customers an entry level mobile service that's either free of charge or subsidised by advertising. For your customers, you're keeping them informed and reducing some of the hassle of travelling. And by offering a free or low cost service, you build a large community of mobile users very quickly that you can promote your ancillary services to (at a time when they're most relevant!)

Value-added communication for the customer's journey

2008-09-16T15:53:00.003+01:00

If you've not read the September issue of Travolution it's well worth a look. Entitled "Journeys" the whole issue is dedicated to a series of articles urging travel brands to take a holistic view of the consumer "when they plan, book and take a holiday".

There are valuable nuggets of information scattered throughout the issue, but for me an interview with Tim Williamson, Customer Director, TUI Travel UK sums up many of the arguments I've laid out in this blog over the past months:

"It's about recognising that that customers are individuals with different demands and expectations. Ultimately, it's about making the travel experience memorable for every customer."

"It's only via interaction that travel companies can inspire customers ... ensure their airport and in-flight experience are hassle free and that once in resort customers, have the holiday they dreamed of."

"Being involved in the process is about using the opportunity to talk to your customers at the right time, using communications that are useful and add value"

Elsewhere, Piers Ford reports that: "As consumers become increasingly cost conscious, loyalty, branding and integration with the customer journey are becoming more important for travel companies."

To me, this says there is no excuse for the complete absence of communication experienced by many consumers once they start their trip. Granted, not every travel brand has the breadth of customer touch-points that TUI has, but anyone who understands the customer's itinerary can communicate at the right time in a useful, value-added manner.

And, it's the ubiquitous mobile phone that enables any travel brand to engage and assist its customers when they're on the move. The key word here is "enables". Mobile is an enabling technology. It's a means to an end, not an end in its own right. Travel companies should be suspicious of standalone "mobile projects"- these are often a byline for technology-driven, tactical affairs that are divorced from business goals.

What really matters is the dialogue with customer...

Instead, let's see more projects focused on creating a value-added dialogue with customers when they're travelling ... using mobile as an enabling technology.

It's a subtle difference, maybe, but projects that focus on the customer experience and that form part of the travel brand's overall communication strategy will deliver better results for the travel brand and its customers.

Use a mobile travel concierge to learn more about customer behaviour

2008-08-22T12:59:00.001+01:00

Airports, travel insurance providers, tourist boards and other organisations with high-volume, travel-related web-sites can differentiate themselves and build an extensive CRM database of customer behaviour by offering their visitors a mobile concierge service.

Airlines and travel agents are best placed to offer mobile concierge services because their booking data contains the customer's travel itinerary - this is essential information if you want to deliver a meaningful, personalised mobile experience. This means airline and travel agent customers have to do very little work to sign up for mobile concierge services.

Customers of other high-volume, travel-related web-sites, need to work harder if they want the mobile concierge service, because they have to enter their itinerary. Typically, this means the travel web-site needs to offer a more compelling service definition to encourage customers to sign-up, but the potential results are well worth it ...

For example:

Consider a travel insurance provider selling annual multi-trip cover. If they offered their customers free access to a mobile concierge service, this would encourage their customers to enter their trip details each time they travel.

Offering this service helps the travel insurance provider differentiate itself from its competitors ... but more importantly, it builds up a detailed CRM database of customer behaviour. Analysing this data will unveil insights that can drive other marketing initiatives or enable products to be tailored to appeal to different customer segments.

In short, by giving their customers something they value, the travel insurance provider gains invaluable customer intelligence in return.

Mobile travel concierge: It's not what you say, it's how you say it

2008-07-22T16:18:00.002+01:00

If you want to provide your customers with a mobile travel concierge while they're on the move, then be aware that although the content you provide (the what you say) is important, the dialogue you create with your customers (the how you say it) is even more critical.

Today, you can get hold of travel-related content, that's been optimised for mobile, from many organisations. Many of these publishers will offer to deliver their information to your customer's too.

If you're looking for a tactical mobile solution (e.g. we just want to give our customer some flight updates; or we just want to tell our customers about events and activities at their destination) allowing the publisher to deliver your content can be very seductive.

However, I'd argue that the strength of publishers is collating and categorising content ... not in delivering it. And, by heading down this route today, you're storing up problems for the future. When your customers start asking for more mobile content (and it's a great idea to survey them before you start your mobile project to get an idea of what they want) you could be tied to a publisher who specialises in 1 or 2 areas and who isn't geared up to support your new more sophisticated requirement.

I'd (obviously!) argue that delivering mobile content to travellers is best left to specialists. A mobile travel specialist will help you create a customer focused mobile dialogue by performing a number of roles for you:

They'll aggregate content for you. And, they should be content agnostic. So, if you have a preferred supplier for particular types of content, they should be willing to deliver this for you, even if this means swapping out some of their existing content
They'll allow you to offer your customers a choice from a number of packages of mobile content, each matched to the customer's profile
They'll allow you to control the dialogue with your customer to ensure any communication is timely and relevant
They'll handle content delivery for you across multiple channels (e.g. SMS, mobile-web, and mobile applications) and in multiple languages

So, content is important, but it's how you deliver that content that determines whether you give your customers a good mobile experience or not.

Make it relevant: using mobile advertising to reach travellers

2008-07-01T09:36:00.002+01:00

We've just published a news release publicising our latest mobile advertising case study which shows how Bristol International Airport increased the average spend in its Tax and Duty Free store by 50%.

You may recall an earlier case study we published showing how TTT Moneycorp achieved a 10.5% redemption rate with a mobile advertising campaign.

Together, these studies show that if an advertiser has a relevant departure day message for travellers, then mobile is an excellent vehicle through which to reach this audience to raise awareness and drive action.

Relevance works for advertiser and recipient.

Ian Hughes, MD of Consumer Intelligence, writing in DMI News picks up on this theme (and thanks, Ian, for mentioning easyJetText!):

"SMS marketing, done well, is not an unwelcome intrusion but actually a, ‘Hmm, thanks for that; I’ll check it out’ tool.

The trick is to get the context right; to align the receipt of the message with an opportunity for the recipient. Make it meaningful, relevant, useful, timely and accurate. If you know I have to be in a certain place at a certain time, then you know it’s timely and accurate. It has a high chance of meaning, relevance and usefulness."

When it comes to creating an opt-in dialogue with travellers, whether you're providing marketing offers or travel assistance, it's essential to engage in a relevant dialogue. And, a relevant dialogue in travel is: time-sensitive, location-based, and context-aware.

You don't need to know my exact location to provide me with relevant information

2008-06-26T16:31:00.004+01:00

I regularly read Alex Bainbridge's Travel Musings blog, so I was particularly interested to read his post about location based services for travel suppliers.

I like his idea of providing a service in resort, where tour operators can use location and mobile to provide holiday-makers with a support service that works in tandem with their existing holiday reps.

For online travel agents and airlines, who don't have in-resort reps, I think mobile and location can go one step further ... acting as a virtual rep ... providing travellers with relevant, contextual information and advice throughout their trip.

But, the thing I liked most in Alex's post was his comment that "it not about knowing exactly where someone is".

Exactly!

Knowing that someone is in Malaga is enough to allow me to filter the information I provide them (location-based). Knowing they are in Malaga on business allows me to further refine the information I provide (context-sensitive). And, if I know they're only in Malaga until Friday, then I can use this information to make the conversation even more relevant (time-critical).

I keep harping on about this ... but the information needed to create a really useful, relevant dialogue with travellers is the information travel companies already collect when they take a booking. A conversation based on this booking data that is time-sensitive, location-based, and context-sensitive is far more valuable than a conversation based on knowing my location with pinpoint accuracy ... but with zero knowledge of who I am or why I'm there.