Location Based Information & The Mobile Traveler

With mobile travel research and bookings still emerging and expected to grow rapidly, brands have an opportunity to get ahead of the curve. According to eMarketer estimations,  16 million people in the US will book travel on a mobile device this year, with that figure set to more than double to 36.7 million people by 2016.

Part of mobile’s appeal to travel consumers is its ability to draw on location-based information, aiding customers on the move who are looking for car rentals, hotels and other services on short notice.

A Q1 2012 report by mobile-local ad network xAd found that almost half of all local travel searches completed on a mobile device in the US were related to transportation. Travel agencies accounted for another 25% of searches, tours and attractions constituted 14% of searches and 12% of searches related to lodging and resorts.

Relatively high clickthrough rates were found for all three subcategories of hotels and lodging, car rentals and airlines. The CTR for ads shown after an airline search was an impressive 17.8%, followed by 17% for car rental searches and nearly 10% for hotel and lodging searches.

According to the report, the leading secondary action—the user’s next action after an initial click—for both car rental and airline searches was the placement of a phone call to a business, at 73% and 89%, respectively. For hotel searches, more than three-quarters of secondary actions consisted of looking at maps and getting directions.

These secondary actions are the result of reluctance among consumers to navigate brand websites on a mobile device. Instead of dealing with an inconvenient interface on a small screen, customers preferred to call businesses directly. In the case of those performing hotel or lodging searches, consumers turned to map and directions apps to find the information they sought. In both instances, users sought the most efficient path, underscoring why brands seeking to secure bookings from mobile customers must focus on optimizing local search with a click-to-call button in results.

In a new Location-Based Advertising and Marketing research report, Berg Insight estimates that the total global value of the real-time mobile LBA (Location-Based Advertising) market was €192 million in 2011, representing 5.0 percent of the total mobile ad spend. Growing at a compound annual growth rate of 90.9 percent, the real-time LBA market is forecasted to be worth € 4.9 billion in 2016, corresponding to 28.3 percent of all mobile advertising and marketing. Key drivers for LBA include the growing attach rates of location technologies in handsets, as well as the increasing consumer acceptance of LB Services in general.

Location is only one of many components in successful targeting, and marketers must also strive to leverage other contextual and behavioural information. High-precision real-time geotargeting is today sparsely used, and rightly so as most campaigns do not require targeting with an accuracy of a few meters. Hyper-local campaigns are nevertheless becoming more common.

Sources: www.emarketer.com, http://www.sacbee.com

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The Future of Online Travel Inspiration, Planning & Booking Process

A recently released study by Amadeus: Empowering inspiration: the future of travel search, identifies trend-setting consumers’ behavior and motivations when shopping for travel online and identifies their experience during the destination selection, shopping and booking processes. The study also details the key trends and predictions for how consumers want to be able to search for travel online in the future.

The study surveyed 4,638 travelers in the U.S., U.K., Germany, India, Russia and Brazil who represent  ‘the discretionary travelers’ – the early adopters whose current behaviors and preferences are leading indicators of behavior in the future.

What we keep in relation to destinations is the need to inspire and convert consumers while minimizing frustration levels due to information overload and lack of trust in available deals. Using advanced destination selection and content customisation tools to attract and inspire consumers earlier in the travel planning process is key to gaining competitive edge in the months and years ahead.

Amongst the key findings of the survey we find:

New ways in which travelers would like to search for travel

In the developed markets, nearly 50% of travelers had a particular place in mind, whereas in the emerging markets, it was only about a third of travelers. Catering to these travelers is advantageous, as attracting shoppers earlier in the purchase funnel broadens their audience and reduces their reliance on search and referral traffic. Furthermore, more than four in 10 travelers across the markets are flexible about travel dates, thus tools that help determine where and which travel dates have the lowest price have widespread appeal. It is time to think outside of the traditional city pair/travel date box.

How travelers want to use mobile devices and social networks when planning and sharing travel experiences

Three in 10 travelers in Europe currently have no interest in using their mobile phones for travel-related activities, but U.S. consumers show levels of interest comparable to emerging markets for mobile features such as alerts, check-in, etc. Mobile device usage for travel is more than twice as common in emerging markets, most notably in India, where nearly 24% of travelers research destinations online on their phones.

How new technologies may change travel planning in the future:

The truly private private sale: Marketplaces around the world have been flooded with promotions, deals, and now flash sale brands that tout discounts with no context of whether an individual would be interested in the product. As consumer segmentation and behavioral targeting to consumers becomes more sophisticated, sellers will be able to microtarget promotions to specific consumers, offering products that are actually relevant for the buyer.

Cumulative intelligence: With hundreds of options, online shoppers are overloaded. Eventually, programs will learn from an individual’s behavior over time by observing and aggregating common patterns. Microsegmentation will help companies analyze behavior and deliver increasingly intelligent results.

Smart systems and virtual private assistant: Devices will become smart and interconnected, and will store and make sense of information consumers look at. The program will recognize and process inputs from the sites consumers visit and what they do on them, and will act as an assistant on the consumer’s behalf.

You will find the entire survey here.

Source: www.amadeus.com

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E-Tourism Present and Future Services and Applications- ENTER Conference 2012

Helsingborg Sweden 24th to 27th of January 2012

Organized by the International Federation for Information Technology and Travel & Tourism (IFITT), ENTER 2012 offers a worldwide and unique forum for attendees from academia, industry, government, and other organizations to actively exchange, share, and challenge state-of-the-art research and industrial case studies on the application of information and communication technologies to travel and tourism.

At ENTER 2012, the theme is on present and future services and applications, thereby considering interactions among information and communication technology use and development in both, a supplier and user context within travel and tourism.

Issues to be covered at the conference include, but are not limited to, the following areas:

Advanced Distribution Systems Electronic Marketing Information Search and Retrieval Technology Acceptance Consumer Inspiration through ICTS Eno-Gastronomic Tourism Information Interfaces and Presentation Travel Search and Meta-Search Crisis and e-Tourism ICT Adoption, Use, and Value Creation Intelligent Systems

Web 2.0 and Web 3.0 Distribution Strategies ICT-enabled Partnerships and Segmentation Legal and Social Aspects Website Design and Evaluation E-Learning ICT and Sustainability Mobile Services Context-Aware Systems E-strategy and e-Business models ICT for Regional Development Recommender Systems

Manolis Psarros, Managing Director of abouTourism, will be attending the Conference as a speaker along with many leading industry representatives. Further information on the conference, the program and the speakers can be found here.