The concept of traveling has changed and so have the travelers. Travel and technology go hand-in-hand, with majority of the travelers relying more on the intelligence of the gadgets more than ever before. The ‘I’ in Internet no longer stands for ‘information’, but it symbolizes ‘Intelligent’. Internet as the intelligent information network, serves as the center of all planning and procurement for travel shoppers. In the middle of this increasing appetite for travel, one thing that is diminishing is the ‘attention span’ of travel shoppers. This does not only imply that travelers have very little time, but also that they are wary of being hooked on to a particular message – because of the relentless bombardment of promotional materials from all angles.

Catching the customer at the right moment and right location increases the probability of conversion in this age of non-stop marketing. As the travel shoppers move away from the static media avenues like TV, PC, LapTop etc…, the only channel of connecting to them is through their mobile devices – Mobile phone, Smart phones, iPhone, Blackberry…

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Let’s envisage a simple scenario – You are traveling towards Disneyland with your wife and four kids and you know that everyone in your battalion will be competing with each other to get the best and most number of rides -  your wallet is going to get a serious dent (sure, you are putting up a brave face!). As you get nearer to the dream destination, you receive a message on your GPS / iPhone – The message is a summary of all the discounts that you can avail of inside the DisneyLand by using a promotional code which you just received inside the message. You make a quick mental calculation and suddenly the finances look upbeat – You might be able to take $500 – $700 off your final budget. That’s not bad…Mobile marketing does get a customers’ eye – with extreme targeting

Caesar’s Palace is one first big names in the hospitality segment to utilize the mobile marketing menu – by utilizing the GPS mobile app targeted at visitors. Guests at Caesar’s can get all the on-spot information on their mobile phones – restaurant hours and rates, booking facility, list of performers in The Colosseum. Visitors to Caesars Palace can opt-in for this GPS app which will provide customized discount and offers to venues in proximity to the user. So, as long as you are staying in Caesar’s, your every movement will be tracked just to give you the best offers in your current location. That’s a win-win situation for both Caesar’s and its guests.

And Caesars i s not alone in this race to tap the sentiments of customers when they are most likely to take a decision. This trend is reflected in the exponential growth of mobile marketing and advertising – it is projected to reach $50 billion by 2014 from it’s current figure of $29 billion. According to a Forrester study-

• “54 percent of online business travelers and 48 percent of online leisure travelers who have web-enabled mobile devices have used the channel to look up travel-related information such as a flight’s on-time status, driving directions or hotel room information.”
• “18 percent of business travelers and 15 percent of leisure travelers researched hotel availability on their mobile devices
  in the past year.”

In addition to the point-of-sale persuasion ..aka Location-based marketing, Mobile devices are also being utilized to create opt-in list for future Email Marketing campaigns – Which we will be discussing in our next post.