Blog homeIt is only when you try to do something that you realise quite how hard it is. The other day I set myself a challenge to come up with some ideas for location / mobile based travel services. My goal was to understand what could coming over the horizon in the next few years.
It is surprisingly hard.
I have been working with the web for a long time (first website in 1994 when you hand wrote HTML in Windows Notepad) - and this maybe the cause of the problem. My mindset is now fully web based - I can come up with web ideas “just like that” - but this whole mobile game is going to be tougher.
Why will it be harder?
Firstly mobile and location based services are going to be pushing up against the inevitable skills shortage in travel technology and the new media sector in general. Like today, the big companies, before spending millions on a project, want a project leader who has at least 5 years experience in the travel domain. These people are just not going to exist in mobile services at the quantity that will be required by the travel industry.
Even finding someone with over 5 years experience in travel websites / travel technology is difficult - and once you find the right person - expensive. Mobile experience will be even more valuable and hard to find.
Is commoditisation of mobile services the answer?
I am sure that companies are going to crop up that will aim to address this issue. This maybe through the production of commoditised software and tools. These tools could be rebranded in a travel companies name - and presented - as their own - to their customers. Call it private labelling if you wish.
I am not convinced that this is going to be a popular route. Regardless of company size all business owners want to differentiate their service. Just look at travel websites - yes many share the same style - and share the same back end technology - but as a result of web design / HTML layer changes - they are able to differentiate significantly from their competitors.
I am not sure that with mobile that this superficial top layer differentiation will be as easy - the underlying technology / functionality will be more exposed to the end customer than with websites - hence if another company has the same service from a technology supplier - there is little differentiation.
So if commoditisation won’t be popular and bespoke will be too expensive - what will happen?
This move to mobile / location based services may be the next tipping point for travel on the web. One aspect that I am looking out for signs of is the “Amazon.comification” of the travel industry - where just one leading website becomes dominant - rather than supplier websites each being their own island.
Imagine if a big travel company really buys into the mobile idea….. and starts innovating wildly. This move to mobile may just be enough to create enough momentum to lock out competitors (in the B2C space) because once consumers adopt a service it may take them a while to look for an alternative.
Think for a second - what would happen if Google was that one company?
I will publish my location based services ideas in a future post…. this one is long enough already!
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