bcg.perspectives – Travel Goes Mobile.
The number of U.S. mobile users is expected to grow at an annual rate of 9 percent for the next several years. The number of Internet-connected mobile devices worldwide will increase by 16 percent per year, led by strong growth in developing countries, according to Ovum at IDC.
By contrast Desktop sales are declining. PhoCusWright expects mobile’s share of U.S. travel bookings to grow from 4 percent in 2013 to 12 percent by 2015, while eMarketer projects the value of U.S. travel purchases made on smartphones and tablets to soar from $26 billion in 2014 to $65 billion in 2018.
Travel companies need to address this fast growing mobile market channel. But mobile usage adds complexity to the relationship between travel companies and their customers as travelers use multiple devices—starting on a PC, moving to a smartphone, then to a tablet, and back to the PC, for example—to dream about, plan, and book their trips.
In 2013, almost half of all travelers using digital resources began the dream phase of their travel journey on one device and completed it on another. This makes it increasingly difficult for travel companies to follow individual travelers’ identities throughout their journeys.
All this i covered in our Case study on Responsive web design and in our mobilechecklist webinars – all availalble FREE at http://checklist.travel-on-the-go.com
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Boston Company say “We believe that the impact of mobile technology on the travel industry will be at least as far-reaching as that of the PC and the Internet. Suppliers and intermediaries—including OTAs, metamediaries, and search engines—need to come to grips with mobile’s transformative potential in all of its present and future manifestations: smartphones, tablets, “wearables,” “drivables,” and innovations still in development, such as virtualization.” Pretty compelling –