PhoCusWright@ITB: Best Practices in Mobile Applications
by Josiah Mackenzie on March 12, 2009
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Highlights from panel discussion:
- Frequent travelers are usually the earlier adapters in mobile technology.
- Don’t just take your existing web content and adapt it to mobile. Create mobile-specific content.
- Notifications of travel changes is what makes the mobile platform unique.
- Many hotel booking systems are too complex to use on a mobile. Will the future bring saved payment/profile information that eases this process?
- In the US, 30% of iPhone users say it replaces their laptop usage
- In Japan, more people access internet on their mobile than with a traditional computer
- For many people in India and China, the mobile internet is their only access to the internet
- Web-based content could eliminate the need to for traditional smartphone apps. However, there are cases when it’s good to have an application that does not rely on internet access.
- The user doesn’t care of your service is an app or online, they only care about ease and speed of use
- Advantage of apps: you can use device-specific features (like iPhone location services)
- Travel suppliers are taking the lead in mobile innovation, not travel intermediaries
- International data roaming is a big barrier and issue to work around



