Mobile phone bookings will not be a reality in 2009 because the technology is not good enough yet.

That’s the view of Mike Atherton, managing director of Mantic Point which provides travel information to travellers via their mobile phone as part of a white label service.

Atherton predicts that consumers will reject the mobile phone as a booking channel until around 2012 to 2014, when 4G technology has established itself and wifi handsets give a good enough experience to users.

He said: “Consumer expectation of user experience is high because people are used to browsing the internet on their PCs.

"At the moment the mobile experience is nowhere near as good as the computer experience in terms of the web and I think there is some way to go yet.

"The thing is that you can’t transpose the online experience to a mobile phone.”

But he added: “Although I really can’t see mobile booking for 2009, what is there and ready to exploited is the possibility quite easily to alter a booking once it has been made and that will really improve the customer experience.

"People are going to start to use SMS more to generate ancillary revenue and to drive the service experiences.

"Consumers will start to decide what sort of messages they want sent to them depending on where they are and what they are doing.”by Dinah Hatch