Travelmole Guest Comment: Embracing mobile technology, by Adam Winterflood

“The mobile phone has become a basic necessity of life. Leaving your mobile at home for a few hours leaves a sense of disconnectedness from personal and business life.

Even the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) has given the go-ahead for mobile phones to be used during flights, something which is been debated widely as perhaps going a step too far.

Mobile phone text messaging has witnessed rapid growth on a global level. Recent research conducted in the US by the Mobile Marketing Association showed that the average number of text messages has jumped by 67% from 12 a week in 2006, to 20 in 2007.

The need to stay in touch means your phone can be a valuable source of information when travelling abroad and can literally be your essential travel partner.

In fact, staying in contact becomes more important the more you travel, and the further you travel from home, as does the ability to instantly access important information.

Generally, travelling takes someone out of their ‘comfort zone’ and the reason why so many of us take our mobile abroad is that it still makes us feel connected to our community as well as contactable in the case of emergency.

Travellers feel more comfortable being connected but also for people travelling, knowledge is comfort. We now live in an instant-information age – want to know something, google it; want to watch your favourite TV programme, go to i-player; or want to let the world know your mood, update your facebook status.

Therefore tapping into this trend is a major opportunity for travel businesses and the way to give comfort to the traveller is to give them access to ‘knowledge’ and the only way to give a traveller access to that knowledge is via a mobile device.

But remember, they are mobile and will not necessarily sit down and surf information. Some will but they are currently, very much in the minority. They want access to quick, bite size up to date information…they want ‘Instant Gratification’.

Maximising mobile technology in an un-intrusive fashion is the next marketing challenge faced by the mobile technology world.

The more we embrace the convenience of text communications in making travellers feel that they have customer service expertise and location information at the touch of a text, the simpler and more relevant our added-value functions can become.”

Adam Winterflood is MD of Travel Buddy, a mobile communication company set up in 2006 to provide an interface for travel companies and tourist organisations to communicate with their customers for operational, promotional and service needs.

Related News Stories: