Travel Buddy (Mobile 365)

Mobile 365 Partners with MobileTrails to Bring Travel Buddy to Vacationers

Brand: MobileTrails

Product: Travel Buddy

Company: Thomson Travel

Goals:
Wouldn’t it be useful to find out what’s going on in your resort while you’re on holiday, rather than discovering too late that you’ve missed the weekly flower market or could have attended a music festival earlier in the week? Thomson Travel, in the UK, wanted to provide a way for their travellers to head abroad this summer and take advantage of a brand new service that delivers all the information they need to know about their destination, as well as vital information—such as the address of their nearest UK embassy.

Solutions:
Using the new tool, called “Travel Buddy,” travellers who have opted in to the service receive a SMS a couple of days before their holiday providing emergency information relating to their resort. 24 hours before they travel, they receive an SMS containing details of events at their holiday destination. Mobile 365 hosts the content, and ensures that each SMS is delivered—and billed for—accurately. The plan is to expand the service beyond its initial coverage in Europe and parts of Africa to the rest of the world, and out to other tour operators.

Holidaymakers can also interact with the service, and send keywords to shortcode 82345 to receive further information while abroad. Examples of keywords include “weather,” “WOT,” (what’s on tomorrow) “news,” and “football.” Even car rentals can be arranged by texting “car;” a customer service representative will call the vacationer back to arrange delivery.

Also, if keywords don’t provide the information a vacationer seeks, he or she can use the Travel Buddy AAQ (Ask Any Question) and receive an answer to any question. What makes the service unique is that the answers travellers receive are tailored to their destination and profile. For example, if they are on a family holiday, the information will be geared towards family activities.

Travel Buddy has proven very popular since launching in April, 2006. Since then, 700,000 travellers have opted to use the service out of an estimated customer base of 5.3 million Thomson travellers heading overseas this year.