Both Tim Hughes and Norm Rose have recently written about the emergence of mobile as an emerging distribution channel for travel (check previous Tnooz post Augmented Reality, mobile, search and (maybe) getting it wrong).
I completely agree, but from a very different context.
While the big players like Expedia and Air Canada are jumping on and creating iPhone and Blackberry applications to sell last minute hotels and speed up check-ins, I think the real opportunity exists for destinations and local in-market attractions and tours.
Viator recently announced that they were planning the launch of an iPhone app in fourth quarter 2009.
I am presuming that the application will allow travellers to purchase vouchers for things to do activities in destination.
I think this is where the opportunity exists for destinations as well.
While Viator may have the advantage in terms of being first out of the gate, destinations will have a clear advantage in terms of local penetration and brand awareness.
Imagine the “Coolsville Tourist Centre” iPhone app which has all the contact information for every hotel, b&b, tour, attraction, restaurant, etc. in the Coolsville area.
Now imagine that app with the ability to book those products in real-time or make a reservation in real-time.
In this case, technology is the least difficult piece of the puzzle, after all there are iPhone developers making all kinds of applications out there that are much more challenging.
The real challenge with this strategy is supplier acceptance and sourcing content, both of which have ALREADY been done by the DMO (for the most part).
The destinations already have all the contact data for their their members and, because they are generally funded by tax revenues, have an obligation to promote all forms of tourism related businesses in their region.
By default, most DMOs have the supplier acquisition process sewn up, something most private companies have a very hard time doing.
You don’t have to look much further than iPhone applications like Tripwolf or Lonely Planet to see how a destination guide could work.
The difference though between these applications and one that could be delivered by a DMO is the impartiality and depth of the content.
In Tripwolf’s case, the content is primarily user generated and so the breadth and quality of the content is relatively low.
In the Vancouver guide, as an example, there were only nine restaurants listed. I can look out my window and see more than 9 restaurants within a two block radius of my office.
In the case of Lonely Planet, the content is prepared and vetted by a professional team of writers, so the quality is generally high, but again, the focus is on premiere restaurants, hotspots, and attractions.
The benefit of a public tourist information source like a DMO is that every business gets equal opportunity at being listed. The TourismVancouver restaurant list includes over 283 establishments just in the Vancouver area. Compare that to TripWolf’s nine and Lonely Planet’s 83.
Now load that into an iPhone app along with OpenTable reservations and you’ve got something big.
So why hasn’t this been done already?
It’s a paradigm shift away from tourist offices and kiosks, which is what most DMOs are used to managing.
From a technical standpoint, the basic technologies already exist in the marketplace. In many cases, the systems are closed and proprietary or they are extremely expensive.
Some systems, however, are beginning to use open XML connectors and OpenTravel based standards in order to support multi-channel distribution.
I urge destinations to seriously consider the opportunities that exist for them in the local mobile space and to move quickly on them.
If DMOs expect to remain relevant and valuable to their stakeholders, they need to look at technologies like mobile as a way of extending their brands to in-destination visitors and driving business to local businesses well beyond just pre-trip inspiration.
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About Stephen Joyce
Don’t assume that consumers will want to use a cell phone to conduct transactions in the traditional “booking engine” manner.
For car hire / auto rental / car rental (!), we believe that consumers will use the device only when closely coupled with maps based location services. For us this translates to a very, very fluid car rental location finder, as well as some very intuitive (one touch) price scanning.
We think that auto rental consumers will be driven by the following need to (in equal measures) locate nearby offers, and price these offers. We believe that transacting car hire on mobile devices will be limited to the last minute bookers who treat auto rental as a commodity.
Consider the following use cases-:
- “I need a car right now I just landed”
- “I need a car when I land – I’m on the plane right now”
- “I just arrived in my hotel – I need a car tomorrow morning to get to my meeting which is 50 miles away”
But also-:
- “Me and the family just arrived at our hotel in Dublin – we need a car on Wednesday or Thursday to hit the Cliffs of Moher – depends on the price as we might take a bus instead”
These are the cases that we’ve addressed with our latest project in conjunction with Nokia. Take a look at the attached material for an idea of where CarTrawler and Nokia believe car rental is heading-:
http://www.forum.nokia.com/Ovi/Featured_Applications/Car_Trawler.xhtml
You can also view a video of the app at -:
http://www.cartrawler.com/nokia/CarTrawler_001.avi
In summary, I think we’re all still at the proof of concept stage – as is the consummer, and I think
that “take off time” for revenue on handsets – at least around renting a car – will be late 2010, early 2011.
One more point – until the European network operators figure out a sensible way to charge for data roaming,
they can forget about any transaction based revenue from travel product suppliers. Consumers should not
have to pay twice for the same service, and need to have a very, very clear picture of how much their session
is costing them as they browse these travel products.
> So why hasn’t this been done already?
It has. At least, some of the functionality you’re asking for was incorporated into VisitHolland’s Amsterdam Mobile Guide (an iPhone app) that launched in April and has hardly been out of the travel top 50 at the iTunes Store since. While there’s no third-party booking link (like OpenTable), you can get straight through to hotels/restaurants from your iPhone via email, web, phone. It’s also a really nice piece of design… and unsurprisingly, for many of the reasons you mention, was downloaded about 25,000 times in its first 10 weeks in the Store.
Most of the comment here is right, particularly the scenarios that Bobby has painted in terms of when a consumer will use a mobile to make a booking. In the short to medium term mobile will not compete with fixed line, it merely augments it and provides the consumer with access to bookable product or information when otherwise they couldn’t. Despite all the ‘hype’ on mobile, merchants are still not embracing mobile or understanding why a mobile proposition needs to be any different from fixed line. A few pointers;
1) Don’t get hung up on ‘Apps’ – App stores are slick and impressive but entail device specific development and revenue share
2) Don’t think that a ‘lite’ version of your fixed line site will tick the box, it won’t
3) Do assume that consumers who are serious about using the Internet on their mobile device will have a device that’s designed to do so. In the US in Q1/Q2 09 an incredible 98% of all mobile devices accessing public wifi were made by Apple. More than 50% of all browser hits to Handy’s servers are from iPhones, whilst Blackberry’s are less than 4%.
4) Don’t assume that consumers are ‘scared’ of transacting over mobile, highest card payment over Handy’s servers £1460 for two flights to SE Asia
5) Don’t think its an expensive and invasive process, if you have an existing web services API its no more invasive than taking on another intermediary
6) Do work with a Mobile partner who specialises in the channel
7) Do work with a Mobile partner who is PCI Compliant
I could go on (and on!) but there is a great deal of misconception as to how mobile can and should be embraced and this needs to be dispelled before the flood gates open and the analysts – who predict that 30% of all transactions will be made over mobile by 2013 – are proved correct.
Excellent points Michael. Although I agree with Bobby about the car rental side, I am mostly interested in the in destination and ancillary products and services that come with being on location already. For example, the restaurants, local maps, attractions, tours and the like. There has to be a clear value add to the user however because these are services already available through local tourism offices in the form of maps and brochures. If the mobile user can find “a thing to do” and purchase a ticket at some promotional price and skip the long line up to get in the attraction, then that is a clear value add to the mobile user.
With regards to your point one about getting hung up on Apps. I think the mobile web is the future, but until the carriers can figure out the fees, the Apps and their ability to cache relevant data locally on the device is going to save the mobile user money and be more attractive in the short-term.
We (Discover Anywhere Mobile) have been delivering (almost) exactly the product you’ve described above, in a very cost & effort efficient manner for DMOs.
Note the reason that we haven’t tied into online booking is that the DMOs we’ve been talking to haven’t really described it as a “must have” feature, possibly because their destination partners haven’t signed up for these features. From our point of view, it would be much better if they did, because of course then we could specifically track an economic benefit the application is provided.
OpenTable BTW, the last time we looked, makes itself quite difficult to integrate into mobile apps, but I’ll have to go back and check the specific reasons for that.
In Canada, we’ve got iPhone & BlackBerry versions running right now in Central Nova Scotia, delivering accommodations, dining & attraction information, as well as tourism bureaus, airports & transport and hospitals. You can see the links on their home page:
http://www.centralnovascotia.com/
and the press release on the CTC:
http://mediacentre.canada.travel/content/industry_news/central-nova-scotia-chooses-discover-anywhere-mobile-develop-iphone-applicatio
DMO’s are in the business of driving business to tourism businesses. Mobile offers an opportunity to target consumers who are in your destination in a new way. It’s a Visitor Informatioon Centre in your pocket.
Providing relevant information, based on the user’s location and even date/time is key. I’m walking around a city and I wonder what’s cool around me. Content is key. Wheather you can book through the app/website or not isn’t that relevant for DMO’s.
What is relevant is demonstrating the value back to their industry stakeholders. That’s why a mobile app/site combined with some sort of loyalty program might be usefull in order to track the number of visitors this DMO activity brings in.
Yes, this is an excellent point that William just made, but let me be even more specific: many DMO’s are in the business of driving business to _their_ local partners, not just to any place within the destination. This is one issue with the OpenTable, or Hotels.com data inside of a DMO app.
Great post, and very timely. Please check out a recently launched solution called VisitMobile: http://www.visitmobile.com
We developed a comprehensive mobile marketing solution for use by Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) and Convention and Visitor Bureaus (CVBs) around the world. VisitMobile allows the destination to create an official iPhone application and SMS solution that works with all phones. The solution provides features like location based search, interactive mapping, real-time offers/discounts, and hot news/future event notifications, providing a value to a visitor before, during and after their visit to the destination. Several premier destinations will launch their mobile solutions in late November.
Three years ago we began quiet trials of local services via text messaging. Our vision was to take Google SMS and make it possible for hotels to create their own “circle of trust” and deliver information about preferred destinations to their guests, when requested by guests. Guests – and employees – can send queries, and get information back plus links to additional, helpful information.
Our early trials yielded a number of surprising results. Like many other businesses, hotels (and DMOs) must be culturally ready for these innovations — it can’t rely on having continued access to a well-intentioned, technically skilled computer guru.
In addition, we think DMOs need to have their content management strategy in place before they create additional apps. I think most DMOs and hotels would agree the cost of adding additional channels (mobile, Twitter, Facebook, Google Wave, etc.) needs to be as close to ‘zero’ as possible.
In order to implement such a content management strategy, there must be a clear monetization model. We’ve seen that pay-for-performance seems to be the best, even if DMOs are not (yet) on board. While OpenTable is an awesome role model, remember how much they’ve invested in their proprietary terminals and applications. That’s one reason why they resist integration into third party apps. The good news is that DMOs such as Dallas have learned they can readily collect commissions of 5% from non-members.
Great article. There’s a lot of good information here, though I did want to let you know something – I am running Mac OS X with the circulating beta of Firefox, and the design of your blog is kind of bizarre for me. I can understand the articles, but the navigation doesn’t function so good.
Kristian:
Thanks for the comment. We have not heard of that error before. Will check it out.