Gen-Y Collective: Geo-location opportunities in travel

Geo-location is probably one of the top three hot topics in travel technology this year as check-in services grow and sales of smartphones soar.

As the industry grapples with such enormous opportunities, Tnooz’s Gen-Y Collective was asked to pinpoint (!) how the geo-location concept might impact on their individual areas and the industry as a whole.

The Gen-Y Collective is group of under-30s from every corner of the industry, assembled to debate how different travel technology trends are impacting on strategy as well as the opportunities they carry.

NB: Worth pointing out that the Gen-Y Collective submitted its ideas ahead of the Facebook Places announcement, but the possibilities remain, just the admission of Facebook to the party makes the case for building a strategy even stronger.

Graham Robertson, Project Wander

I’ve been excited about what mobile geo-location services will (eventually) do for the travel industry for quite a while now. For the first time, brands can be actively engaged in their customers travel experience while it it’s happening. Sounds futuristic?

Explore Chicago did this many months ago when it partnered with Foursquare to create custom badges for visitors to the city (followed by VisitPA).

In my opinion, the current incarnations of mobile geo-services have been rather conservative, leaving most of the fun up to those willing to blaze a trail for everyone else to follow.

The game-changing moves have yet to be made, for example. Check in at the Qantas terminal in Sydney and then the again at arrivals in Melbourne to unlock the Qantas city hopper badge, or the mayor of the Qantas terminal gains free access to the lounge.

Can’t meet up with your tour? Tweet your location to the supplier and get picked up within minutes.

For geo-location services to reach their full potential, mobile providers are going to have to drop these ridiculous international roaming fees. They’re really the only limiting factor on something that has the potential to revolutionize the way the industry interacts with it’s customers.

Mike Tomlinson, British Airways

There’s a great potential for mobile services within the airline industry. However, I’m not sure that we would benefit from knowing the location of our customers – the airline industry is fairly tied down to physical locations and processes within it’s core business.

Where there are clear benefits to geo-location is at either end of the airline journey. Travel and traffic information, maps, guides and hotel/restaurant recommendations are all areas where geo-location has a part to play.

At the moment, I think these destination services will only appeal to a very small market.

Roaming data charges exclude anyone who has to pay their own bill and the fragmentation amongst smartphone platforms makes it difficult to target the majority of customers.

Given that it’s outside of our core business, I think we need to wait and watch how this area develops with a view to forming strategic partnerships that will add value to our customers.

Amy Widdowson, NileGuide

I am one of those individuals who has to be reminded that checking in on Foursquare at the dinner table is rude.

While not every traveler is attracted to reminding their friends everytime they stop by Safeway to purchase toothpaste, there’s a major opportunity to capture the behaviors and decision patterns of travelers on the fly – where content can make an immediate impact on planner and impulse traveler alike.

At NileGuide, we like to think of ourselves as being that in-the-know person who can recommend not only the hippest scotch bar in town, but also the nearest tourist trap that’s actually worth your cash.

I tested our iPhone app What’s Next pre-launch on my first trip to LA, and found out about the Animal restaurant while deciding where to go for a nibble in West Hollywood.

You can no longer divide “planning” and “content” in our sphere. It’s imperative to not only have the tools, but to be able to provide aspirational, inspiring local content on the fly, when you need it.

That’s the challenge: it is one thing to be able to check in, and a whole other thing to be able to actually convince someone to get there in the first place…

James Addison, Skyscanner

Internet geo-location services were arguably an early indicator that the web was becoming the sophisticated marketing arena it is today.

Country-level analytics and ad-targeting were frequently-touted features during the heady days of the dot-com bubble, and in a way it’s surprising that mobile applications have taken so long to catch up; but they certainly have now.

GPS, cell triangulation, and IP geo-location are all coming together to provide robust location information for mobile applications to use.

There are immediate benefits from this information for travel search – pre-population of departure locations being the frequently seen example – but I think we’ll increasingly see a trend towards collection and analysis of historic user travel, using mobile geolocation; Foursquare and similar services are already beginning to harness this data.

Search is all about providing relevance, and travel search will benefit from knowledge of destinations users have previously visited, and the activities they took part in – from events, to hotels, and even restaurants.

Similarly, business travellers could be alerted to timetable/service changes given information on their regular commute.  I’d suspect that this geo-location history may quickly become as intrinsic – and as straightforward to use – in online travel search and advertising as simple IP-address geolocation did ten years ago.

Katie Wait, Thomson Holidays

With the increased popularity of smart phones comes this innovative way to reach our customers and potential bookers.

We’ve learnt through our personalised pre-travel websites, MyThomson and My First Choice that customers will spend lots of time researching their hotel and resort, gathering as much rich content as they can get their hands on relating to their holiday.

Through geo-location tools such as Foursquare, there are lots of opportunities to reach our customers in resort, providing them with local restaurant reviews and encouraging them to leave their own, recommending local places to visit, and potentially letting them know when their reps ‘check-in’ to their hotel if they need to speak to them.

There are opportunities to encourage loyalty too, teaming up with sites such as TopGuest to offer bonus points and special offers for loyal customers checking in to our hotels.

We can’t ignore the fact that using mobiles to access the web abroad can be expensive, so may limit its success.

However as we’ve seen with the ‘My’ sites, customers seek this information before they depart, so there’s a great opportunity to use location-based services as a ‘virtual guidebook’ to plan where to visit, find top restaurants etc. before they go, searching on their destination instead of their current location.

Potential customers could also benefit from targeted offers available at their closest retail shops, flying from their local airports. The possibilities are endless…

Chelsea Mitchell, Holland America Line

Until recently, cellphone service wasn’t available at sea on cruise ships since most cell phone reception towers are land-based. However due to satellite reception, cell phone service is now available on board the majority of cruise ships.

With geo-location services on smart phones, the cruise industry can take advantage of mobile advertising featuring cruises departing from local ports.

For example, with Google advertising, cruise lines can geo-target mobile users specifically in San Diego, CA with ad copy like “Cruise roundtrip San Diego from $699.”

Another opportunity with geo-related mobile services is creating a smart phone application that suggests shore excursion activities based on a cruise passenger’s geographical port location.

This application will allow cruise passengers to access this application and easily find activities ashore.

Lastly, and presumably the more obvious opportunity, is leveraging social media with geo-location cellphone services to build brand awareness and buzz.

For instance, Cruise lines can leverage the FourSquare idea to add their ship names or create their own application so when passengers embark.

Even though cell phone service is available on board most cruise lines, it is expensive. Call, text, and data services are billed at rates similar to International roaming fees.

However with sales of smartphones increasing every year, cell phone service rates aboard cruise ships may change.

Joanna Cheok, Tourism New Zealand

Geo-location services allow destination marketing organisations to reach travellers and potential travellers directly and influence travel decisions.

Our role could be bringing tourism operators together, creating local partnerships and bundling deals.

With geo-location, Tourism New Zealand has an opportunity to use the functionality on Newzealand.com as a base for a mobile application. Travellers to New Zealand could pre-load their travel diaries and view them on the go.

Based on location, we could send suggestions of what to do and offers for geo-tagged tourism operators from our database.

Visit PA has done a great job with their Foursquare partnership and quality checked tips.

New Zealand’s challenge is the lack of mobile internet access, due to the geography of our landscape. Currently, travellers would only be able to use these services mainly in cities. Roaming fees are another limiting factor for those travelling to New Zealand.

Services like Foursquare and Gowalla are only reaching a small subset of the online population and still need a critical mass of users to be effective.

Twitter and Facebook have the best chances at making location-sharing common behaviour and we’ll be watching developments between these services before deciding where to place resource.

Kim Maier, BCD Travel

The travel industry is learning that location-based networking apps are not a fad, but rather an opportunity to be capitalized on.

It is a new way to incentivize corporate travelers and influence purchasing patterns through gaming techniques.

These strategies are proving to be effective in many sectors of consumerism and are trickling into the world of corporate travel via tools like Topguest – a free service that gives you real rewards and program points for your check-ins.

Other gaming incentives include loyalty rewards for checking-in at gates, terminals and specific airlines.

While there are great expectations for traveler friendly apps such as Gowalla and Foursquare, traditional corporate travel account managers are anything but enthused.

Just as Orbitz and other public online booking tools enabled travelers to make more decisions on their own, geo-location apps could likely disjoin corporate travelers from travel policy, for example, purchasing outside of policy solely for the purpose of accumulating rewards.

However, it is to the advantage of travel companies to adopt a strategy that embraces these tools – travelers are using them regardless of corporate policy.

By creating a living record of our world through geo-location apps, corporate travel companies will have the ability to track activity, target advertising and reward and incentivize better than policy behavior via gaming mentality.

Anna Li, Orbitz

As is relates online travel agencies, geo location services on mobile present opportunities to market to specific locations as well as target consumers with more relevant messaging.

In order to do so, OTAs such as Orbitz will require robust mobile sites and/or smart phone applications that will be able to read the geo locations captured from the mobile devices.

Relevant display banners can then be delivered to consumers on their mobile devices, such as travel deals originating from their location.

Additionally, geo-location services offer a great opportunity for OTAs to cross-sell attractions and services.

While traveling, consumers could be able to search & book attractions, such as theater, tour and concert tickets based on their current location.

This would be especially useful to those consumers that do not purchase in advance but would like to avoid lines.

OTAs also have the opportunity to offer consumers added value, similar to our Orbitz Care Alert service in which travelers can receive up-to-date travel conditions information.

The geo-location service could allow travelers to view any pertinent delays, weather & traffic information that may impact their travel en route. Alternatively, consumers may opt for alerts to be proactively pushed out to them through their mobile device, including nearby hotel deals or area offers on attractions or other services.

OTAs would ultimately be involved in all phases of traveling, from researching to booking to the experience of the trip while it is in process, thereby earning a customer’s brand loyalty.

Sarah Kennedy, Sabre

Location-based services have already been integrated into industry-leading travel apps like TripCase to connect relevant offers with nearby travelers in real-time. Additional mobile travel tools like Yelp and TripAdvisor offer real-time reviews, augmented reality guides and virtual concierges for travelers around the globe.

These tools are mind-blowing, regardless if discovered in 1990 or 2010.

However, what mind-blowing can’t articulate is the long-term revenue potential for these tools in our industry to-date. My apologies to the startup warriors currently rolling their eyes at my mention of revenue right off the bat. I know it’s not all about money on day one – customer problems take time to solve.

But let there be no doubt – revenue is sexy. It benefits your customers through your ability to reinvest in meeting their evolving needs, and it reaffirms for those with a vested interest what potential your vision could realize.

In this decade, clearly defining the needs these location-based tools can meet and how that helps realize revenue long-term is crucial for the Gowalla’s and Brightkite’s of the world to avoid a short-lived day in the geo-location based sun.

For end-consumers, needs that geo-location services can help meet are abundant. Most importantly, consumers increasingly are dissatisfied with the travel shopping experience.

Geo-location offers invaluable data and resulting increase in advertising relevance to improve the shopping experience. And for corporate travel agents and managers, these tools offer more control and real-time service.

For the former, geo-location check-in data, stored via mobile by these consumers every day, could be used in combination with trip shopping data to uniquely enhance travel advertising relevance before the booking is made.

It combines what Sally Traveler says she wants with what she actually does on a daily basis – that’s priceless. The more targeted and relevant the ads are for the consumer, the more likely that consumer lead is to convert, and the more the advertiser is willing to pay the technology provider for that lead. Win – win – win.

(For example, Sally Traveler’s online hotel shopping history combined with her Foursquare check-in data for the last year could improve hotel advertising relevance based on: proximity to top coffee shop preference, favorite restaurant type, nearby art museums and/or shopping malls.)

For the latter, an opportunity I personally hope becomes more prevalent is increased female business traveler safety via mobile safety check-ins, traveler safety notification tools, heat-mapping to identify nearby predators, and exit route mapping unique to each hotel and floor where the traveler is located.

The continued adoption of GPS-enabled smart phones will support these potential growth areas, and both will be primarily monetized through the evolution of “advertising” into “personalized recommendations.”

This evolution improves the shopping experience for a traveler prior to booking, no matter from where or with what device they chose to book.

Relevance is the linchpin, qualified leads come as a result and high-margin travel advertising revenue then begins to flow – the sexiest revenue of all.

Sian Martin, Hyatt

Location based services are new and exciting, and offer a world possibilities, but figuring out how to use LBS in the hospitality industry is top of mind for those of us who are trying to meet the demand of this social media dominated world.

With less than five percent of people in the U.S. using geolocation services, according to a recent Forrester Research study, why are we spending so much time trying to understand it and perfectly execute our strategy? Because, the world is social media.

How can the hospitality industry utilize LBS? FourSquare is an opportunity for individual hotels to spotlight promotions at the property’s bar or restaurant, extending the “Mayor” badge to those who check-in, helping a hotel to create a fan base or “regulars,” and especially attract those that are social media influencers.

Most importantly, LBS helps us better understand and provide for our customers. For example, enter your location on your phone and find: a map to the nearest hotel when your flight is cancelled, a map of local joints for those interested in really getting to know the city, or a map of child friendly activities for the traveling family.

Having these services available, mostly via apps, to guests is now and will continue to be a priority.

As long as people continue to disclose where they are at any given moment, we have to make sure we’re there also, in some virtual shape or form.

Related posts:

1. Forrester: Location-based services not ready for most marketers
2. Location-based mobile services bolstered by acceptance of advertising
3. InterContinental hits it big with Gowalla mobile marketing
4. Apple iTravel dream comes another step closer with location app function
5. Five untapped opportunities for mobile and travel