A few weeks ago Choice Hotels became the first major franchise to launch an application allowing guests to book their room from an iPhone. With the integration of GPS capabilities, street-view images and the ability to amend or cancel reservations, Choice has positioned itself in the forefront of the competition for business travelers.

Yet they are still just a quick step behind the Kayak booking portal, which 2 weeks earlier launched its iPhone capabilities. Marketed as a stranded traveler’s best friend, the application allows a guest to access a comprehensive comparison of flights and hotels.

The dot-mobi version of the site has a special feature where hotels can be sorted by the categories “cheap”, “close” and “classy” depending upon the nature of the stay. And once the property is located your guestroom is just a phone call away. Say goodbye to sleeping in airport terminals. With international search capabilities, Kayak is zooming to the top of global booking sites. There’s no doubt the competition will be following quickly.

Has your hotel reserved its’ dot-mobi website extension – and is now the time to develop your iPhone application? If not, at least be sure to check if your hotel be found on Kayak’s search engine.

Our Friday cool site of the week is an Amsterdam-based startup called 7scenes. Creative Director Ronald Lenz introduced the service during the PhoCusWright@ITB event.

Basically, it enables organizations to build tours that can be accessed on mobile phones. Users can take their phone out of their pocket, and see what’s around them. Content is downloaded on the go, and they can choose which tour they would like to take. From their website:

Consider the city an extension of your organisation, a fascinating place for you to publish and reach people in a different way. The city with all its (hidden) information is a beautiful stage filled with historic events, personal stories, cultural meaning, demographics, social relationships and much, much more. Something has occurred on every street corner and every brick can claim its own history.

Combining these surroundings, your content and phones that have made internet mobile and location aware (GPS), we can now interact with places in a whole new way! We are all about making these new experiences possible and offer a mobile and online platform that makes it easy to create, play and share GPS-based games and tours.

I think hotels could really build their brand value by developing customized tours of local attractions for their guests. As they say, the city you are located in is really an extension of your hotel. Make the destination exciting and interactive, and you’re subtly selling rooms.

To learn more about 7scenes, you can take a tour of how it works.

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

Marriott Mobile

According to Advertising Age, Marriott Mobile generated $2 million in gross revenue since its August 2008 launch and the end of the year, with strong growth since the beginning of 2009. Omni Hotels and Hilton are reporting similar results.

I recommend you read this article by AdAge.com for some interesting statistics on which type of potential guest is most likely to reserve a room on their mobile.

If you’re thinking about trying this, see my thoughts on mobile marketing for hotels. It could well be an increasingly important distribution channel in the future.