Travel agencies are keen to capture the rapidly growing customer base on mobile with their own apps. Prudence Lui, Caroline Boey, Paige Lee Pei Qi, Rohit Kaul and S Puvaneswary profile some, while Kathy Neo looks at others that could benefit the trade

Wing On Travel

What The Hong Kong travel agency’s app offers 400,000 properties worldwide and air tickets to more than 200 destinations. What sets it apart is the choice of 70 LCCs, powered by Abacus. Future additions include bus tickets to China, attraction tickets and even restaurant bookings.

Wing On will continue to invest in  search engines like Google and Yahoo, so that the app comes up top in search results. It will also increase promotions on social media like Facebook and Twitter during the launch.

How Consumers can pay by credit card, and the process takes less than five minutes.

When An eight-figure investment, the app was developed a few years ago with support from parent company, Ctrip. A team of about 100 IT professionals worked on this platform, and Wing On sped up the process early this year to make it available in October, coinciding with its 50th anniversary celebration. It hopes to see return on investment from 2016.

Why As FITs account for a single-digit percentage of overall business, Wing On Travel director and CEO, Lanny Leung, hopes to expand this market to 10 per cent. The company also intends to establish itself as a mobile travel agency by targeting younger travellers.

She said: “So far, there is no similar app designed with such a scale of content and price-comparing function to filter the best options for consumers. Wing On also has its eye on the Macau market, where OTAs are hardly present.”

Yatra.com

What Consumers can search for flights, hotels and holiday packages on the app.

Yatra.com also claims it is the only Indian OTA that provides a web check-in facility, which is currently available on its iOS app. There are also plans to offer this service on other platforms.
“No other OTA is currently offering this facility. Travellers can also view their booking history and recent selections,” said Sharat Dhall, president, Yatra.com.

How “Yatra.com tries to make the experience as smooth and comfortable as possible for its consumers, with features like eCash, a loyalty reward programme that gives instant cashback to customers for every purchase made, as well as offering them the benefit of instant refunds in the case of cancellations,” said Dhall.

When Developed in-house, the mobile app was launched in the last quarter of 2013.

Why The main objective was to provide ease and convenience, enabling customers to plan and book their travel on the go.

Dhall said: “We have seen the mobile booking segment grow significantly, and the market is definitely headed in that direction. With the easy availability of cheaper smartphones and rising Internet penetration via mobile, an increasing number of travellers are researching and booking their holidays on the mobile.”

Yatra.com currently receives 25 per cent of its bookings through the app, compared to 10 per cent last year. Twenty per cent of its digital spend is for its app.

Lvmama.com

What Catering to FIT travellers in China, Lvmama.com’s app was developed to provide users with a convenient one-stop service to book tickets to scenic spots in China, domestic trips, regional and longhaul outbound travel, cruises and more.

At present, the majority of users are using the app to book tickets for scenic spots and travel to nearby countries, said Kate Ni, assistant general manager, Lvmama.com.

Claiming to have more than 10 million registered users, the company is still in the process of acquiring more users. Ni said: “We are promoting mostly in the mobile app segment, especially among search engines and social media.”

How Users can browse, book, and pay for purchases through the app. In addition, they can share their travel experiences and photos using the app.

When The app was launched in June 2011. It was developed by Free-trip Wireless Center, a Lvmama.com division, and cost more than RMB10 million (US$1.6 million).

Why With the rapid development of mobile technology, sales through the app is expected to grow. It now accounts for more than 50 per cent of sales.

BeMyGuest

What Created by Singapore-based tours and activities aggregator BeMyGuest, this B2B app caters to its suppliers. Suppliers are able to manage bookings, reviews as well as access customer details and active listings.

How Bookings can be accepted and completed entirely through the supplier app.

When Kicked off in March, the app is built entirely by the company’s own technology and design teams.

Why The app was built to provide a mobile booking management tool for tours and activities providers.

BeMyGuest CEO, Clement Wong, explained: “As many of our suppliers are frequently on the move, this app reduces the time taken to accept booking requests. Many suppliers are even bypassing having a laptop altogether, hence the need for an app specifically for mobile devices.”

Luxury Tours Malaysia

What Groundhandler Luxury Tours Malaysia is in the midst of testing its mobile app, eTravel Partners, which aims to give travellers an easy way to have a soft copy of their itinerary wherever they are.

With help from Singapore-based IT provider DesignerSoft, the app also provides suggestions on additional tours and other add-on products they can include in their itinerary.

How Consumers pay their local travel agency for bookings, while any add-on purchases made upon arrival in Malaysia can be made to Luxury Tours Malaysia.

When For Android phones, the app is being tested and is scheduled to go live in February 2015. A similar app for iOS is being developed and testing is scheduled for November.

Why Ganneesh Ramaa, manager, Luxury Tours Malaysia, said: “It is meant to enhance the services of our tour partners by offering more options on hotels and restaurants within the same location and within the same price range; our partner’s logo will appear on the welcome page.” Being paperless, it also helps save the environment, he added.

For travel agencies intending to go big on mobile…

Travelport Mobile Agent

Targeted at TMCs as well as business/leisure travel agencies, the app allows travel consultants to make bookings for their customers from handheld devices by obtaining quick access to Travelport’s Travel Commerce Platform.

The latest version features enhanced interface, graphics, content and speed, as well as customisable keyboard quick keys, ViewTrip integration and a newsfeed section with relevant news articles from travel publications.

Travelport ViewTrip Mobile
A mobile itinerary management and planning tool offered to agencies currently using Travelport ViewTrip. It provides travellers with flexible itinerary management throughout their entire journey through timely push messages, flight alerts, a trip list, a currency conversion tool, as well as airport, travel and events guides, among others. The itinerary automatically appears on the customer’s mobile device when it is emailed to them by their travel consultant.

The app was designed to enable travel consultants to extend service and support to their customers beyond the initial booking, improving value and customer communications.

TripCase
Offered in Asia-Pacific by Abacus (of which Sabre is a shareholder), this consumer travel itinerary app pulls together all elements of a trip such as flight, hotel and rental car bookings for easy viewing. Travellers automatically get updates such as gate details or flight schedule changes, and can easily share their itinerary with friends and family.

The corporate version of the app is used by American Express Travel to keep its business travellers informed. There is also an airline version.

Sabre Red Workspace on mobile
Last year, Sabre launched its iPad app for travel consultants to sync their Sabre desktop solution, Sabre Red Workspace, to their mobile device, effectively allowing them to book and manage travel anywhere on the go.

Sabre also launched its own agency app store, Sabre Red App Centre, giving travel consultants the ability to download a wide range of apps for their job.

Abacus MobileConnect
This travel agency tool was launched in mid-October, allowing companies to create their own branded apps.

Functions include check-in prompts, trip alerts, flight status and contextually relevant destination information such as weather and events, together with personalised promotions in-trip. In addition, a Call for Help function uses GPS data to alert next of kin to difficulties, and allows agencies to offer a 24/7 helpdesk via VoIP, IM or SMS.

For Asia’s hyper-social markets, there is also a Send Postcard option to share images with family and friends, as well as the agency for reviews. The app will also integrate with popular social media platforms.

Additional reporting by Caroline Boey, Paige Lee Pei Qi, Rohit Kaul, S Puvaneswary, Kathy Neo

Don’t believe everything the industry says about Millennials, says Carolyn Childs, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com, in an op-ed written ahead of the Australian Regional Tourism Network (ARTN) annual convention this week in Port Stephens.

IF YOU’RE in regional and local tourism in Australia marketing to younger tourists – the so-called Millennials – it may be time to challenge misconceptions.

Millennials (also called Generation Y) were born 1980-1995 or so. Today they are in the 20-35 age range.

As sponsors of the ARTN MyTravelResearch.com Young Tourism Professional Award 2014 at the ARTN Convention 2014, MyTravelResearch.com has been in touch with the finalists over the last few weeks to mentor them through their presentations. Although each shares a passion for regional tourism, their approaches and priorities are all different.

Similarly, in Asia, we were chatting to two younger female journalists (one based in Singapore and another in Thailand) at a PATA event recently. Both said that they kept seeing industry analysis of Millennials that didn’t resonate with their lives at all.

Researchers use segments like lifestage as a way of cutting through the clutter. It makes it easy for tourism marketers to connect with customers. And there are ways in that Millennials have common attributes.

This is particularly true about how they book and plan travel – which is digitally. According to a PATA report, The Rise of the Young Asian Traveller, more than 70 per cent of young Asians book their travel online. This is rising fast according to Tourism Australia (see below).

The expected stereotype also holds up around the role of social media in travel. According to the PATA report, social media posts by young people’s friends were in the top five most influential factors across the 13 countries in the survey. The influence of friends’ social media was the greatest for Thais and Filipinos.

Young Asian travellers said that social media apps were the most useful while travelling – more thanmaps, language tools, deals, and dating sites.

But human beings are more complex than that. Here are 10 different drivers that could help us profile customers (see below).

That complexity is reflected in the behaviour of Millennial travellers. Having friends and family in the destination was more important to Filipinos than to other nationalities. Immersion in local culture was more important to young Chinese travellers (who were also more deal driven than other nationalities).

Millennials don’t fit easily into a box on who they travel with either. They are a diverse generation according to both PATA and Boston Consulting Group (BCG). Some 37 per cent of them travel with friends, but often in organised groups. But nearly as many travel with family (31 per cent).Importantly, multi-generational travel is growing because the proportion of Millennials who get on well with their parents and like travelling with them is larger than we have seen for any previous group at that lifestage.

Some 11 per cent of young travellers in the PATA survey said they were travelling with an intimate partner. A sizeable segment of this age group are into early relationships.

Millennials are not uniform (or stereotypical) in their choice of accommodation. Among PATA’s young Asians, less than 10 per cent stay in a hostel. Over 20 per cent stay in a one- to three-star hotel. More stay in a premium hotel than take advantage of free accommodation. It seems that brands that recognise this, such as Moxy Hotels (a collaboration between Marriott and IKEA), are going to win loyalty.

This loyalty is worthwhile because if Millennials see value, they are ready to pay more. BCG estimates that Millennials will pay up to 13 per cent more per air ticket when they fly on a business trip.

Ally this to their lifetime value (perhaps as much as 50 years of travelling) and it’s easy to see why marketers need to look below the surface.

The message we’ll be emphasising at ARTN is: stop thinking ‘are millennials for me?’ and start asking ‘which millennials are right for me?’

By Carolyn Childs, co-founder of MyTravelResearch.com