Two-thirds of visitors to the UK in 2010 used a mobile phone during their stay, perhaps signifying an ease of concerns over eye-watering charges when overseas.
Around 20 million of the 29.8 million overseas visitors used their mobile devices when in the country in 2010, results of a wider study about tourist behaviour published by VisitBritain this week indicate.
Four out of ten leisure travel visitors to the UK last year used their mobile phones at least once during their stay, the research says, with the vast majority of business travellers doing the same.
Of course, VisitBritain is keen to talk up the findings, given that it has just launched a mobile application to showcase the top 50 places in the UK, but the data comes from an official source: the Office of National Statistics Passenger Survey for 2010.
The results could indicate a number of trends: a willingness to incur some charges when using a mobile phone overseas or the beginning of a drop in roaming charges from some network providers.
VisitBritain says the highest proportion of overseas mobile phone users in the UK were in the 35 to 44 age range, with visitors from Norway and the UAE most likely to receive or make calls.
In terms of other devices being used, business travellers from Brazil (88%), UAE (81%) and the US (80%) used their own laptop when visiting the UK, while over half (57%) of leisure travellers from Hong Kong also came with their own computer.
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Mobile usage abroad doesn’t necessarily equate to Mobile data usage abroad. Lots of people use their phones abroad (phoning, texting) and don’t use data at all or may use WiFi instead. This research doesn’t appear to mention anything about data roaming usage, but I would be interested to know the trends and stats for this.
I would suggest being VERY careful with this data. Firstly the passenger survey is just that a SURVEY. This is the famous study that was largely discredited when the UK government realized that it had under-counted the number of immigrants entering the country from Europe.
There is no data to support the usage abroad. That would be more interesting.
However I would suggest reading my piece from last week. http://www.tnooz.com/2011/08/09/news/bringing-trust-to-travel-via-a-managed-digital-marketplace/ The EC is making it easier and is searching for a common rated market rate for all of the EC by mobile operators.
The natural situation is to roam and continue to perform as you do in your home market. But the fact that I carry around 4 mobile phones and 6 3G sticks is a testament to the fact that it is not there yet. The data roaming charges are outrageous.
Be warned – TURN OFF YOUR DATA roaming when you travel. Otherwise you will be appalled at the charges. Wimpy offers such as Vodaphone’s 25MB of data roaming is really not even adequate.
Cheers