It’s year of mobile, yet again. I think that’s been since 2004?

 

I wonder if they did this with the automobile for the first 20 years? Year of the auto year of the auto…. “year over year, there has been a 300% growth in auto usage”.

 

 

 

It frustrates me that these numbers don’t take into account the correlation of adoption of new technology, rather than what they seem to be suggesting – that last minute bookings have exploded. That increase in mobile bookings isn’t because the market is powerful, it’s just a brand new revenue stream that didn’t previously exist. These people were standing at pay phones looking through the yellow pages a few years ago. click

That being said, I am still curious as to the psychology of a “mobile booker”. I know omniture is looking to break out tablets from their analytics, because the booking pace is more like a traditional laptop…. but people who book over their mobile / pda / smartphone are typically, if I am not mistaken, last minute bookers? There’s a joke through the industry about whether you really want to deal with the kind of guest who books a room at the last second.

 

Sounds like drama.

 

Joking aside, I can’t wait for data about the type of person that books last minute, and in the long run, how to tell whether that guest is actually worthwhile. The psychology of last minute booking is very interesting to me. If *ANY* of you have any data on who these people are, and why they choose what they choose, I would love to read some more. I know there’s growth, but who are these people that haven’t booked their hotel room? Seriously.

 

 

So what is their motivation? I couldn’t care less that people are adopting new technologies to facilitate bookings – what I want to know is what those technologies can tell us about the people that are booking. For example, Omniture makes it plainly clear that Apple users are consumers, while Android users do not purchase as readily… it is like 10 to 1. Do you think a last minute mobile booker will book because of a easily accessible golf package (or any package). I just don’t know if I trust that someone booking via a mobile device is compelled by a “special”, or it is their panicked exigence of needing a room immediately?

 

In the future, of course, this will all be resolved because before the guest even knows they need a room. We will know enough about a customer through their personal history, location, their mobile device’s data, and active sentiment analysis which will lead to an overall pulse of consumer “predisposition”. We will eventually know precisely how to target them before they are even looking up the hotel.

 

Now *that* is guest service… reducing stress and confusion by pleasantly reducing options. Isn’t that *so* like the future?

 

Booking a room night will involve intuitive guest management that actually includes freedom from choice, to reduce stressful confusion, as an amenity?

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