March 2010 - As smartphones have become ubiquitous with business travelers, the availability and use of mobile travel services has multiplied. Travelers now can shop, book, purchase, check in, board, receive alerts and even file expenses from the screens in their pockets. But corporate travel buyers, it appears, are late to take advantage of the innovation with mobile travel strategies. One wake-up call to buyers may be the potential for travelers to book out of policy.
While 78 percent of more than 1,000 British consumers surveyed by CyberSource said they would "never" make purchases on their mobile phones, 12 percent said they "definitely" would make such purchases or would "consider" doing so, the e-commerce vendor announced in February. Considering that other market research shows there are billions of mobile device users in the world, 12 percent is a "massive opportunity," said business travel consultant Clare Murphy during a Business Travel and Meetings Show panel discussion last month in London.
"When you're on the road, what's the first thing you do when the plane lands? Turn on your phone," said panel moderator Rearden Commerce worldwide sales vice president Tony D’Astolfo. "That's a level of complexity that travel buyers and suppliers have to figure out. And that's just the beginning of their journey. Anyone ever take a client or prospect out to lunch? How do you get to the airport? Do you park and get reimbursed? Do you take a car service on the other end?"
D'Astolfo could have been making the classic Rearden Commerce pitch, which is an attempt to service more of the traveler's journey than simply air, car and hotel, but Concur Mobile, Sabre's TripCase, Travelport's Journey Manager, TripIt, WorldMate and a bevy of other handheld solution providers also are trying to bring more corporate management attention to the traveler's full, mobile-powered journey.
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"See it as a productivity device for travelers."
— Tony D'Astolfo, Rearden Commerce worldwide sales vice president
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D'Astolfo asked corporate buyers attending his panel discussion how many of their companies had mobile strategies. "One person? Okay, two or three," said D'Astolfo. "You really should." His straw poll wasn't surprising given the emerging nature of the technology. Surveyed last summer by Sabre Holdings and ProMedia.travel Content Solutions, 31 percent of 222 travel buyers said they did not know how their firms manage mobile applications. Twenty- eight percent said their companies restrict app downloads to mobile devices, and 13 percent said their companies preferred mobile-enabled Web sites over downloadable apps. However, 32 percent said their firms internally managed and supported sanctioned applications, while another 15 percent place no restrictions at all on mobile app downloads by employees.
For buyers concerned about the challenges of gaining cooperation from information technology departments that have their own ways of supporting and disseminating mobile software, D'Astolfo recommended they help their IT colleagues "see it as a productivity device for travelers." Buyers also can talk to senior management about mobile as an opportunity to preserve or grow program compliance--because whether or not in-policy purchases are available, purchases will be made. What the corpo- ration allows or whether it has a strategy almost doesn't matter, if one believes observers who say mobile travel usage will be a bottom-up phenomenon.
"While possibilities are immense and still emerging, the industry needs to adapt," said American Express Global Travel Services president Charles Petruccelli during The Masters Program in February. He joined other speakers in warning corporate travel buyers not to underestimate the mobile dynamic. "Everywhere, mobile usage has exploded," he said. "The best innovations in mobility are still ahead of us. Key industry stakeholders will not be able to overlook this need as [just] an extension of their current Web or point-of- sale strategies. There's a need for a mobile-specific strategy that will challenge us with its own platforms and applications."
Concur CEO Steve Singh at a separate event in February said the company added 35,000 users for its iPhone, BlackBerry and Windows Mobile applications after launching them in June 2009. "One day in the not-too-distant future, you'll be able to grab your mobile phone and book your flights within India, book hotels in Beijing, restaurants in Israel, sporting events in Madrid and conferences in New York," said Singh.
Though he said it's less than 1 percent now, Orbitz for Business president Frank Petito expects more than half of travel eventually to be booked by smartphone.
