Mobile Services for the Hospitality Industry

Mobile services appear to be an obvious choice for travel and tourism as the travellers are on the move, which is the first criterion for mobile services to be relevant. The travel and tourism industry, which is one of the largest and most rapidly expanding industries in the world and one of the significant users of ICT in its operations, will no doubt be an important market place for mobile services. Nevertheless, according to a study we conducted in 2003, only a few of the respondents were using mobile services to support their travel but many expressed their intention to use these services when they become viable for them. The travel and tourism industry has seen many dramatic changes within the last decade because of the possibilities offered through the wired internet. When mobile services start to offer an effective alternative to presently used routines and services it is expected that they will have a profound impact on the business models of the travel and tourism industry. The available mobile services in the hospitality industry are not as many and as value-adding as expected and we contrast them with the travellers’ attitudes and expectations in an empirical study. The results and insights collected while studying travellers were later used to build a mobile booking system prototype for a major hospitality chain in Finland

Overcoming Online Booking Barriers with a Software Agent Approach

Through online self-booking travel sites on the Web, consumers are offered great opportunities for convenient and inexpensive travel bookings. Nevertheless, they face certain problems and limitations in this respect: The booking process tends to be time-consuming and complicated, and the retrieved fares are often expensive. This research suggests that the most significant barriers to online bookings can be eliminated or reduced with a software agent approach. The paper presents the structure, behavior and the operating environment of a multi-channel software agent application, FareTracer, which has been designed to assist consumers in making their own travel reservations on the Web. Based on a dynamic modular design, the FareTracer can scan any number of pre-defined and ill-structured data sources on the Web to pick out and retrieve only the essential information in a matter of seconds/minutes