BTN_ITB_DAY3_PP1_14:Layout 1 02/03/2010 15:50 Page 1
ITB Berlin Special Edition
Friday 12 March 2010
www.breakingtravelnews.com S P E C I A L R E P O R T
World Travel Awards 2010 nominees announced page 15
Hospitality
Sport Tourism:
intelligence report page 6
a booming sector page 10
Luxury Hospitality back with a bang page 70
Mobile internet usage to double by 2013
The mobile has eclipsed the PC as the world’s most powerful communications device. This endorsement was given by Google CEO Eric Schmidt at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona last month, when he named his company’s strategy as “mobile first”.
Programmers at Google, he said, work on mobile first, then other platforms. “Young people don’t call it a mobile phone, they just call it a phone,” Schmidt said. “A device that is not connected is not interesting, it’s lonely. An app that does not leverage the power of the cloud is not interesting.” The implications for the travel industry are overwhelming. Over two thirds of leisure travellers and three quarters of business
travellers have already used their mobile devices to find local services such as accommodation, according to hotelmarketing.com. There were over 450 million mobile internet users worldwide and that number is expect to double by 2013.
Johannesburg (http://joburg.city.mobi/), Pretoria (http://pretoria.mobi/), Nelspruit (http://nelspruit.city.mobi/), Polokwane (http://polokwane.city.mobi/), and Rustenburg (http://rustenburg.city.mobi/).
Not having a mobile website is no longer a luxury for the travel industry. Hotels and resorts in particular are adjusting their budgets to incorporate mobile into their overall marketing strategies.
Realizing the importance of the web, businesses have invested heavily in creating functional websites with commerce capabilities. Now that web-enabled mobile phones are coming onto the market and data tariff rates are falling, businesses must realize the importance of mobile websites especially since there will be a momentous shift in the market – more smart phones will be sold than PCs by 2011.
Mobile market penetration is over 100 percent in some areas of the world which means that people can own more than one phone at a time. In Africa, where access to the internet is scarce, mobile has become the communication device of choice and the world is experiencing an entire generation who are skipping PCs and going straight to mobile. Mobile sales in these regions are booming. This summer will see mobile internet come of age at the FIFA 2010 World Cup. Football fans visiting South Africa now have the technology at their disposal to use the mobile as a way to connect, communicate and share, just as they would with a PC. This includes having access to local information about events, dining, and attractions during their stay, and on the move. Free mobile services which provide this information such as city.mobi – the mobile travel guide to over 600 destinations worldwide – is the ideal platform for mobile advertisers to reach this engaged audience. City.mobi provides detailed information about accommodation, attractions, dining, city guides, and transport information tailored for users on the go. During the World Cup the host cities on city.mobi offer up to date mobile scores, group standings, and match schedules. These cities include Durban (http://durban.city.mobi/), Port Elizabeth (http://portelizabeth.city.mobi/), Bloemfontein (http://bloemfontein.mobi/),
One of the travel companies that has embraced mobile technology has been Sandals Resorts. The luxury all-inclusive brand has teamed up with London-based mobile web development firm World Mobi to create sandalsresorts.mobi, a mobile hub that showcases its twelve Caribbean properties. Without a website optimised for the mobile internet, consumers will be viewing full PC websites on their mobile phone resulting in a poor user experience and unsatisfied customers. Mobile websites are specifically designed for the internet on mobile devices as the user experience is entirely different. The device is smaller. The screen is minuscule compared to other desktop displays. Input methods are often different than that of a QWERTY keyboard and the user might access the mobile web using one hand while the other hand holds a cup of coffee or grips a train handle. The PC took 30 years to reach 85 million people and the mobile phone took 35 years to reach 2.7 billion. Increasingly, mobile phones are becoming internet enabled and therefore having sites optimised for all portals looking into the one web are essential for consumers to have the best user experience in order to maintain brand integrity.
info@world.mobi | www.world.mobi Hom Home me
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