Growth in Mobile Tourism

We recently conducted a survey on travelers using the the Digital Concierge 2Go service. The results point to a dramatic rise in the acceptance and need for travel services to be available on mobile devices and the readiness and desire of users to embrace information available on a mobile phone. Although the survey was targeted at getting feedback on the Digital Concierge 2Go service in particular, the survey is crystal clear in what it reveals about general trends for mobile tourism. Here are some of the findings: 60% said they were empowered by having information available on the phone, 68% said they would be prepared to pay a small fee of $5 or less for a mobile Digital Concierge type of service, 70% used the Travel services what to see and what to do feature, 68% used the restaurant and bars listing to find food and drink while 57% used the service for shopping, 30% used the Call a taxi feature, while 40% used the Check Flight information (which required an online connection), 39% used the weather forecasting and 50% used currency conversion, while only 20.3% used Singapore Airlines partner promotions. 64.2% said they spent more than Singapore $50 in the venues they visited found in the mobile directory. A staggering 88.9% said they “would like” to receive promotions from vendors who matched their preferences (indicating a willingness to be “marketed to by merchants if the promotion was well targeted). 79% said they would want to receive an SMS alert if friends or family, social or business network member was within 100 meters (which bodes well for the location based services where merchants can market to travelers based on where they are within a city at any given time). Of features they wanted to see available: 69% wanted to be able to buy tickets or make mobile transactions, 64% wanted an interactive route finder, 48% wanted a travel planner and 50.6% wanted reminders. Occupations of users ranged from Students to retiress and managing directors to housewives. 11.8% rated themselves as novices in their knowledge of mobile technology while 52.8% rated themselves as Intermediate, while 35.4% rated themselves as experts. 70.2% used the service 1 to 5 times during their stay while 16.7% used it 6 to 10 times and 4.8% used it 11 times or more. 71.2% were leiser and 21.9% were business travelers. This is just a selection of indicators on the utility of mobile services and general travelers acceptance and desire to use them. We predict tremendous growth in mobile concierge services like Digital Concierge 2Go over the next 12 to 18 months on the global stage as hotels and airlines and banks and credit card services start to embrace everyone’s favorite communication device – the mobile phone. we forecast spending by merchants on mobile marketing on a per city basis in Asia Pacific to reach over USD21 Million with a global spend in excess of USD5.2 Billion by 2010. Key trends will include integrated services between mobile and other digital acess points for information and an increase in the memory size and capability of mobile phones, while telecom operators will reduce roaming charges and instead seek a piece of the advertising or subscription sales pie. Dannie Francis Chief Executive Officer, Cellcity owners and operators of Digital Concierge 2Go. for more information contact [email protected] or visit our website www.digitalconcierge2Go.com