Gone are the days of paper maps and awkward conversations trying to figure out a foreign transit system. Today's smartphones and
In a $4 from $4, we explore the market for mobile travel services, dive into travel-related mobile usage, analyze how mobile travelers are attractive to brands and advertisers, and look at some of the barriers to growth in the mobile travel space, particularly the high cost of international data roaming.
Here's a brief overview of the opportunity in the mobile travel market:
- Tourism is, of course, huge business: Tourism is one of the world's largest industries, $4. Many travel-related apps have audiences in the millions.$4.
- Mobile travelers are a particularly attractive audience for brands and advertisers: Recent research on mobile travelers has discovered particularities about their demographics and habits that make them quite desirable. For example, $4.
- Online travel is increasingly going mobile: Not surprisingly, given the increased adoption of smartphones as travel tools, $4. But opportunities for travel applications go beyond bookings. Advertising revenue will flow to travel apps in part because they are able to ask for and collect location data from users.
- Mobile is also particularly strong for last-minute hotel bookings: $4t leverages the last-minute and spontaneous nature of many mobile-mediated travel bookings,
Orbitz noted that "$4," and $4. Mobile has clearly created a new business opportunity in hotel booking, creating a channel through which to sell rooms that otherwise would remain unoccupied and unsold.
In full, $4