Travel Portals and Location Based Services

Location Based Services

November 30th, 2006 Sid Puri-->
With Mobile Phones being pegged as the biggest market access tool over the Computers in India. come 2007 we will see lot of travel portals lauching mobile applications. Though its very good and useful for business users. But for users who dont wish to type lot of details they phone should provide enough information to travel application for straight away start pushing deals/information to users. This is possible by taking location as a constraint. Dr Torab Torabi at Latrobe University under whom supervised me on my research in location based services always said application development should be information independent and we should work towards making a framework.
Getting back to how would location enabled travel application work on mobile phone . For travellers comming into Delhi for Commonwealth Games 2010 lot of them will be making unplanned visits with basic information on where games are being held etc. Here the travel application can help them interact with local enviornment and help them ditch the lonely planet book they carry.
# Based on user present location advice him of hotels around them and check room availability and prices. Advice game venues proximity. Example few events being hosted by delhi university so living in east delhi will not help. Advice on nearest ATM’s etc.
# Provide multilingual user experience.
# Integrate with Mobile Payment options so users dont carry cash and cards. Can access/buy metro rail tickets using phone etc.
#Enable collabration with facility to discover other travellers looking for company in vincity.
They are couple of ideas which can be made workable. The day has to come when tourist in chandni chowk will be travelling on rickshaws with not lonely planet guide in hand but mobile phone giving information on demand with location as constraint.
Entry Filed under: Travel 2.0
Leave a Comment