As a society, our smartphones are increasingly becoming a more important in our daily lives. Already replacing watches, alarm clocks, wallets and calendars today we carry our smartphones with us everywhere, including the bathroom. While smartphone users are traveling everywhere with their smartphones, are they actually booking travel with their smartphones? eMarketer asked that very question in a survey of 1,200 internet users and asked about their travel booking habits on the internet. The responses indicate that 40% of digital travel researchers will use their smartphones and tablets and mobile payments to complete travel bookings. This indicates an increase in adoption of digital payments in the travel industry. Travel agent Sandra Wilkins says “more and more we are booking travel arrangements via our web site and seeing an upward trend in mobile devices accessing the site”.
As smartphones and tablets begin to replace our wallets as a digital wallet, travelers are looking to ticketless travel possibilities using their phone or tablet to replace traditional physical travel tickets. About half of the travel booking users were willing to spend more than $500 for their mobile travel transactions. Ten percent say they would make a travel purchase more than $1500. Thirteen percent said they wouldn’t use their smartphone or tablet for travel agent bookings. Recently the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) debated reducing its restrictions on smartphone and tablet use during flights, which could boost the amount of travelers using the device as well as encourage more travel related spending.
Travel Agent Bookings on Laptops
Laptops took the top spot for travel agency bookings topping out at 63%. The more entrenched and ubiquitous notebook was the most used mobile device to perform travel bookings, with tablets and smartphones taking 2nd and third in that order. 39% of tablet owners book travel on their tablets while 27% purchased with their smartphones. Mobile Wi-Fi users tended towards laptops to book travel transactions as well. 48% claimed using a laptop with 34% saying their laptops were the only device used to book a travel transaction.
Travel agencies are rising to the challenge by providing booking m-commerce or mobile commerce on their web sites. Using techniques that render pages optimized for a computer screen and transform to give a good experience on iPhone smartphones or iPad tablets. Users can come by and complete a travel booking even paying for the transaction electronically with their digital wallet through an e-commerce gateway. It works much the way mobile point of sale works on tablets and smart phones. If your travel agency agents process credit card transactions electronically there seems to be growth in mobile transaction processing that may bring your agencies new opportunities.
