I read an interesting piece of news today about how Alaskan Airlines and Horizon Air are resorting to mobile services, in an effort to retain customer loyalty. The mobile services that these two airlines are currently offering are designed for the iPhone, BlackBerry and Microsoft Windows Mobile users and are hoped to improve their passengers travel experience and convenience.

These new services will enable passengers to make changes to their reservations, access airport information and potentially purchase tickets. Passengers can also check their flight status information, flight schedules, flight alerts and check-in 1 to 24 hours prior to their scheduled departure. Furthermore, passengers can use their “My Trips” feature to view their itinerary, change their seats, check their upgrade status and add an Alaska Airlines Mileage Plan number to their reservation. (for more information check out www.mobilemarketer.com/cms/news/database-crm/5632.html)

I believe that the more savvy Airlines are finally beginning to realize that with so many carriers and options available to travelers, retaining loyalty and repeated visits are becoming harder to achieve. Brand loyalty has been replaced by price consciousness thanks to the proliferation of budget carriers.

At last years WIT conference an ‘expert’ in the travel industry said that to retain customers, airlines and hotels need to offer more than just refurbished toilets and renovated rooms. What is missing is that little extra service that makes passengers and guests feel special and cared for. Being an ArrivedOK subscriber, I think the expert hit the nail on the head. Its no longer enough to offer the superficial trimmings that most hotels and airlines think us travelers require.

Instead, what we are actually looking for is convenience, and the knowledge that you care about how we feel. If an airline or hotel offered me the use of ArrivedOK FOC for flying or staying with them, I would consider traveling and staying with them during my next trip. Its those little extras, the intangibles that make us feel cared for, and that is what retains loyalty.

The recent economic downturn, saw an increase in complaints towards budget airlines. Last year, CASE (Singapore) received 281 complaints against airlines, of this, 157 were for low-cost carriers. Most of the complaints were centered around the travelers’ inability to contact the airline, being overcharged, not informed of flight changes, last minute cancellations and refunds being promised but not given.
Recently my brother, decided to book a flight on a budget airline to Thailand. Unfortunately, due to work commitments he had to change the date of the flight. This should not have been a problem as he had adequate time to inform them before a penalty would be imposed. However, no matter how often he called the airline’s hotline, he was unable to reach them. After many a failed attempt, he had no option but to pay the penalty for not informing the airline within the specified number of days about any change in flight details. This would be funny, except for the fact that he was being penalized for the airline’s inefficiency and not his own.
Some folk may argue that this is what one expects with a budget airline. And I do agree with this up to an extent. Yes I do not expect to get an unlimited flow of alcohol on a budget airline, but bottled water would be greatly appreciated. Yes I understand that prettily wrapped hot meals are not practical, but surely a bread roll or two wouldn’t break the bank? I realize that the whole point of a budget airline is to fly at the lowest possible cost, but surely passengers still deserve some form of comfort and courtesy, or is that asking for too much when one travels on a budget carrier?
The horror stories about delayed and cancelled flights, luggage restrictions (more on this another time) make me glad that mobile services such as ArrivedOK exist. With ArrivedOK, my hotel, my host and my family will not panic if they don’t hear from me. I can be rest assured that my host in the country I am heading to, wont have to wait in the airport for a flight that has no intention of arriving, and instead, will only head out to pick me up when he receives my arrival message courtesy from ArrivedOK. This is just one reason, why I am glad such technological innovations exist. Another interesting thing I just discovered is aircomplaints.mobi a nifty service that allows you to rant about bad airline service as soon as the offending action takes place, using your mobile phone.
So the next time you fly, be it on a budget airline or not, register for ArrivedOK and be assured that your family and friends will know when you arrive at your destination.

We all know that calling and sending SMSes while in roaming is expensive. But just how expensive is it? Whenever I travel, I instinctively call or SMS home or office on my mobile phone, simply not registering the fact that call charges are quite different when one is not on home soil. Its only when I get back to Singapore and receive my monthly bill do I get a heart attack at the cost.

A good example would be my husband’s recent trip to Thailand. He made a few calls and sent several SMSes to me during the three weeks he was away. I am still reeling from the SGD1,400 bill he received and I am yet to recover from the shock and make payment for it, even though I have already received one reminder in the mail so far. Since then, I no longer freely use my mobile phone while in roaming, unless it is a matter of life and death, really.

I first heard about ArrivedOK from my friend who travels several times a month. She insisted that this service was a fantastic way to inform ones loved ones when overseas without busting the bank. Not being an early adaptor of new technology I was a bit skeptical, but after the shocking bill I received from Singtel, I decided to explore just how much I can save on roaming charges by switching to ArrivedOK.

First of all it is important to understand what ArrivedOK is and how it works. ArrivedOK is a flight arrival tracker and not an alternative sms service. What’s unique about ArrivedOK is that it tracks you as an individual, so its only when you reach your destination airport that your messages are sent out to your family and friends. You can check out their website at www.arrivedok.mobi for more info. Even for a technologically inept person such as myself, using the service was not a problem. It involves just three basic steps. Log onto the ArrivedOk site and register, enter the mobile numbers or address of your recipients, type out your message, switch off your phone, fly and when you switch it back on upon landing, ArrivedOK tracks your number, verifies that you have in fact landed at your destination, and sends out your messages to your list of family and friends. Its as simple as that.

With an initial investment of USD 9.90, you can start off with ArrivedOK’s Economy Class Package which would give you 30 credits, making each credit USD 0.33. With this package, I would receive free blog posts, free emails and 29 arrivals or text messages, which is honestly a huge saving.

Now if we were to do a brief price comparison, it would cost me SGD 0.61 to send an SMS when roaming using Singtel from Thailand, and if I was on a Thai SIM (AIS Thailand) SMS messaging while roaming would cost me Baht 10.77 or SGD 0.46 per message. But if I was subscribed to ArrivedOK’s Economy Class Package, it would only cost me SGD 14.00 to send out 29 SMS messages and free emails and blog posts!

I could go on and on comparing the outrageous roaming rates that many of us end up paying without realizing. This is why, from now on, whenever I do travel, I am most definitely going to sign up with ArrivedOK and save myself a bundle on roaming charges!

The best news is that currently, if you display a link to ArrivedOk on your website or blog, and direct your friends and other travel loving people to register for the service, you will earn credits. These credits can be used like currency to pay for your ArrivedOK smses, so all in all, you save a 100% when you use ArrivedOK if you have adequate credits, so invite your friends to register for the service (www.arrivedok.mobi) and fan page (www.facebook.com/arrivedok) and stay tuned for more interesting travel tips and tricks :)

ArrivedOK now passes geographical coordinates of the travel destinations from its database to Twitter, so every arrival tweet is now geotagged, enabling your followers to see on a map the place where you just landed and have additional context when viewing tweets.

Though Twitter website does not display geotags yet, the growing number of third party applications does, for instance, such popular clients as Echofon, TweetDeck, Seesmic. Examples of other location-based Twitter apps are: Happn.in and Trendsmap.

Enabling geotagging in Twitter

By default the geotagging service is disabled for Twitter users. This means that you have to opt-in to sharing your location and this can only be done through the Settings page on twitter.com.

Follow these links right now to enable geotagging in Twitter:

mobile – twitter.com/account/settings/geo
desktop – twitter.com/account/settings

How it looks like

Now your ArrivedOK tweets will be geotagged and marked with an icon of some kind, depending on what Twitter app you use. Clicking the icon will open a map for you – in the app window or in your browser; some apps display Google Maps, some use Yahoo.

See below the example of Arrivedok geotagging in TweetDeck client. Happy landings!

ArrivedOK – “The Personal Flight Arrival Tracker” – automatically tracks your arrival at airports worldwide and instantly alerts your friends and family by SMS, email, via weblogs and social media – right at the moment you turn on your phone after the landing.
Visit ArrivedOK: Website | Mobile site | Facebook | Twitter

The title may sound like an oxymoron, I mean, how happy can you be when travelling, if you don’t own your own personal jet or eye-candy stewards to serve you freshly squeezed juice, and centre filled chocolates with a gentle shoulder rub thrown in for good measure?

But funnily and also thankfully enough, airports have realised that an unhappy traveller comes a close second, to a plane full of screaming babies, hence the recent shift towards travel friendly airports.

Since I am currently based in Singapore I shall talk about the airport that I am most familiar with. Changi Airport offers free wifi at all four of their terminals. Now travellers can surf the net, log on to their office network, if they are suddenly overcome with love for their jobs, or more realistically, check their personal email, update their blogs, Facebook account and register and update their ArrivedOK account. With over 400 free internet kiosks and 80 laptop Ethernet access points located throughout the terminal lounges and transit areas, Changi Airport offers everyone in the vicinity wireless broadband, keeping us happy and connected.

This shift towards being contact-able on the go is great news. There used to be a time when I would have to lug a whole bag of coins to call home while waiting the requisite three hours before boarding. On days that I forgot my bag of change, I used to stare at the worn out linoleum on the floor until my eyes crossed and vision blurred. Thankfully now there are much more constructive things for travellers to do with their time. Of course the luxury of free wifi and air-conditioning is still a foreign concept in some countries, so if you have any horror or happy airport experiences to share, please do, because I would love to have a list of airports I should avoid or at least come armed with an arsenal of entertainment, so as not to go crazy with boredom.

As the saying goes about too much of a good thing…., Its now come to a point, that airports have become such wonderful places to be at, that non travellers seem to prefer to while away their free-time napping or reading magazines while sipping coffee, making it no longer a place no longer exclusive to those of us toting boarding passes.

If this trend continues, one day genuine travellers will no longer have anywhere to hangout at during the three excruciatingly long hours until boarding, what with all the seats taken up by the non travelling riff-raff surfing the net on the mobile phones while sipping their cup of expresso!