Airport Apps, A Win-Win for the Travel Industry

Unpredictable weather, long security lines and extremely time sensitive logistical planning makes it easy to imagine that your last trip to the airport could have involved overstressed airport staff rescheduling a flight for a bunch of cranky travelers that cannot understand why they have to spend the night in Frankfurt and pay 10 euros for a 4-pack of batteries.
It’s not the same at every airport, but I have a feeling we’ve all been there at some point in our travel history.  This being said, mobile apps provide airports with a huge opportunity to simplify the travel experience as well as provide travel services and tools to minimize stress.

• Receive delay notifications on your mobile before leaving the house
• Look for alternative flights when your flight is cancelled
• Pre-purchase your ticket for the Heathrow Express on your tablet
• Breeze through security with your digital boarding pass
• Forward yourself your flight, hotel and car rental info an automatically create a travel itinerary
• Snap a pic of your parking spot and tag on a map with GPS
• Receive a discount coupon from Starbucks after checking-in at the airport via Facebook

What’s really exciting about this space is that all the features listed above already exist and would impact your travel experience in such a positive way. But if you took a second to think about what’s to come with NFC, QR codes and ERP solutions - mobile could literally revolutionize what we know today as ‘just another trip to the airport.’
Airport apps:  It’s win-win
While the ‘Time Killer App’ you played during your 2-hour delay in Amsterdam was a life-saver, the reality now-a-days is that we are always connected to our mobile devices. Airports can take advantage of this opportunity to positively impact their bottom line pre-during-and-post travel by:

• Leveraging the unique power of mobile to increase revenue generation
• Creating a richer channel for affiliate merchants to reach the consumer
• Anticipating delay drivers, plan preventive actions and take recovery measures
• Providing cutting edge customer service

 
http://www.amadeus.com/airlineIT/the-always-connected-traveller/docs/mobile_infographic.jpg


This means push notifications for final boarding calls, rich promotional splash pages for seasonal offers, coupon system for airport shops, integrating booking engines for flights, hotels and transportation as well as providing city guides, airport maps and weather information for all arrival and departure cities.
How to get it right
This is a business critical app that would differentiate any airport from its peers if it effectively aligned business priorities with the evolving needs of their customers.

1. Accurate real-time data mixed with valuable content
2. Entice travelers to purchase and pre-reserve products or services
3. Ensure travelers get the most out of their airport visit

From there – the sky is the limit.

No NFC in the iPhone 4S

I am currently working on a blog about NFC* in mobile marketing. Then Apple announced the iPhone 4S without NFC capability, which puts everything into a new perspective. Now it seems way more important to talk about what this means for the industry. The blog on NFC in mobile marketing will be published next week instead.

Seldom has one company’s decision meant so much for an industry as Apple’s decision not to support NFC in the new iPhone. So far the biggest short-term supporters of NFC have been Google with various initiatives. Several Nokia, Samsung and RIM devices are already available in the market. Apple, however, is extremely important, as the iPhone is a mass-market device with a large proportion of early adopters eager to try new things.

I believe that the consequences of the decision are:
* Many retailers will delay decisions to upgrade PoS systems for NFC for at least a year
* PoS payment solution suppliers such as Verifone are less likely to invest in pilot programs
* Other device manufacturers such as HTC and LG may delay embedding NFC chips as they wait for Apple
* Marketers are less likely to support mobile marketing campaigns leveraging NFC as most of them have an iPhone

Another consequence we will see is a slower transition to NFC compared to what many analysts and industry supporters expected. As of now, no one to my knowledge has gone as far as pronouncing NFC a dead standard- yet but I bet we will see some industry comments soon.

Was it unexpected or shocking news from Apple? Not really but considering the relative low implementation cost for Apple many people thought they would include NFC despite previous comments but maybe with some kind of restrictive use through Apple.

What does it mean for mobile marketing and payments? It will primarily delay the implementation of loyalty cards and mobile payment systems using NFC for about a year but in the long term we are still confident that Apple and others will support and implement NFC.

Despite this we will update you on future exciting opportunities with NFC in next weeks blog. Because we are still very excited about the long-term prospects.

* Note: For more about NFC read our previous blog post on http://www.mobilemarketinguniverse.com/?p=326

Top topics 2011 – app development cost, top appstores and more

Looking back at the last couple of years of blogging on Mobile Marketing Universe we are always curious what people find the most interesting topics. And here is the top 5 of the most popular posts:

1. How much does it cost to develop a mobile app on iPhone, Android and other platforms?
Originally posted one year ago and updated earlier this year this blog has generated about 27% of our traffic which is quite impressive taking into account that we’ve published over 50 blog entries during this time.

How much does it cost to develop a mobile app on iPhone, Android and other platforms?

Update: What is the cost developing a mobile app?

2. Top 10 Appstores Worldwide
We thought this would be an interesting one considering that most the talk is about Apple Appstore and Android Market nowadays. In fact, there are other appstores that are performing quite well and we will continue to publish updates on these once a year so look out.

Top 10 Appstores Worldwide

3. How much does it cost to develop a mobile website in XHTML and/ or HTML5?
Although we mostly speak about mobile apps we also believe that every major brand must have a mobile web presence and clearly our readers seem to think the same.

How much does it cost to develop a mobile website in XHTML and/ or HTML5?

4. Mobile Web vs Mobile App
One of the most discussed topics among marketers is whether they should go for a mobile website or develop a mobile app. We talked about the pros and cons of both solutions in these two articles

Mobile App vs Mobile Web: Bysting Myths

Web vs. Apps? Mobile Web/ HTML5 vs. Mobile vs Mobile Apps Part 2

5. Cross platform mobile app development for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Java
We’ve been talking at conferences and workshops about cross-platform mobile app development for over 3 years and with new platforms being introduced this has always been a popular topic.

Cross platform mobile app development methods for iPhone, Android, Blackberry and Java

and more recently with an update about porting available here

Porting iOS (iPhone) Apps to Android and Blackberry