Business Daily Africa has a good article about mobile phones and planes. Here it is:

Mobile phones take a step into the air travel industry
Written by Kui Kinyanjui

September 3, 2008

When Grace Maina embarked on a three-day trip through Europe, she expected to be exhausted after adhering to her hectic schedule.

She did not count on encountering a new inconvenience – having to endure an upsurge in mobile phone use while on board.

“I just couldn’t believe it,” said the 65-year- old housewife, “Everyone was on their mobile phone before the plane took off and right when it landed.  It was  scary – I thought mobile phones were banned on planes due to safety reasons. I felt my space had been invaded,” she said. Read more…

A report by Amadeus and the Association of Corporate Travel Executives (ACTE) has found that mobile technology is set to transform the entire travel experience for business travelers by improving access to information and services to ease their trip and by enabling corporate travel managers to increase travel policy compliance. The “Upwardly Mobile” whitepaper, unveiled at the ACTE Global Education Conference in Washington, saw 72 corporate travel managers from across the globe surveyed on their views of how mobile technology is impacting business travel. In addition, more than 30 interviews with both corporate travel managers and technology experts were conducted. The findings show that mobile technology will revolutionize business travel, allowing travelers to book and amend flights, make hotel reservations, as well as to complete expense forms while on the road, and in doing so, increase their flexibility, welfare and productivity. Mobile travel technology can also provide travelers with other time saving features, such as flight check-in, virtual room “keys,” as well as electronic boarding passes sent directly to their mobile devices. As a result, employees will need to spend less time on travel-related tasks in the office, instead performing them while traveling. Implemented across the entire business, these functions will deliver substantial cost savings for companies through increased productivity and efficiency.

For details, visit www.amadeus.com/corporations/GoingMobileWP. 
Source: modernagent.com 

Social media marketing becomes a hot topic in Travel industry.

“According to data available in the US, users are spending on average 30 minutes at social networking sites on a monthly basis” – EyeforTravel reports. And it is known that UGC can increase conversion to bookings.

But the situation is not the same for Asian people. They are not committed enough to such kind of communication:

“According to James Sundram, Head of Asia, Lonely Planet Publications, the presence of brands on sites such as YouTube, Second Life, Facebook etc is definitely worth the investment, but the Asians are generally not ready nor committed to use such community sites for their travel planning and arrangements”. Asians are still shy to participate.

So what is the way out?

LP, for example, suggests to overcome these limits by enhancing connectivity via mobile phone:

“These developments will benefit the Asian traveller much more because of the usage trends. Asians are not known to be avid readers but Asians love their mobile phones, and penetration in HK / Korea / Singapore / Philippines etc is more than one phone per person”.

SITA and Cambridge University researched. They found:

1) “location sensing via mobile devices could save airlines up to $600 million by tracking passengers, sending messages and moving them to gates more efficiently”

2) “by the end of 2010, 67% of airlines plan to offer mobile check-in. By then 82% of airlines also plan to offer notification services on mobiles.”

3) at “a trial at Manchester Airport in the UK, redemption of vouchers sent to passengers’ mobile phones resulted in 45% higher spending than among other shoppers.”

Sources:

ComputerWeekly.com

SITA

Originally published on 08 February 2007 at www.travelweekly.co.uk

Mobile technology will be central to booking and managing travel arrangements in 2020.

Customers will use mobiles to change travel plans, for example a business traveller could switch to a later flight if a meeting time is changed.

Travel firms will also use mobiles as the first channel of communication with customers, informing them of flight delays or traffic jams on the way to the airport.

Internet access on mobiles will be vastly improved, meaning business travellers will be able to remain in contact with the office – and continue to work – even when flying.

Meanwhile, social networking could lead to holidays being purchased in different ways.

This could mean special interest groups formed by people through the Internet using their group power to secure discounted travel.