There's no hiding or running anymore as service providers get smart with mobile services to target you while you are on the move; as one expert says, it's about the right information at the right time. Yeoh Siew Hoon listens in on the conversation.

Imagine when you are feeling "emotionally weak" – you have a raging hangover, there are babies crying at the boarding and you know you are going to be sitting among them and suddenly, you receive a message on your mobile from the airline offering you an last minute upgrade?

Of course, you grab it.

That's just one of the tactics airlines are trying on mobile devices to increase revenues, reduce costs or improve efficiencies, according to Johnny Thorsen (right), co-founder of  ConTgo, the developer of the Mobile Travel Assistant (MTA), a corporate travel service designed to manage and deliver travel information to travellers wherever they are.

Speaking at the ACTE Conference in Singapore in mid-August, Thorsen listed a few other mobile services by airlines – allowing travellers to use frequent flyer points to redeem services, enforcing mobile check-in, chasing the traveller if they are not at the gate and delivering pre-paid service vouchers to the traveller before departure, cutting out the need for cash transactions inflight especially on low cost airlines.

Citing the Finnair example, he said 45% of its flights are now on mobile check-in. "Check-in at counter costs 9 Euros, at kiosks, 3 Euros and with mobile, 40 cents. There's no option if you want to cut costs," he said.

He placed Mobile Travel Sevices under four categories – On The Road Procurement, Point of Experience, Travel Security Management and Mobile Information Delivery – and while he said all four were important to an organization – TSM, for example, enables a company to communicate instantly to all relevant travellers for example in a situation like the recent Jakarta bombings, he felt that it was in the Point of Experience where there is the biggest gap to be filled.

"Has anyone contacted you when you are on the road, giving you useful information about the place you are in? It's about the right information at the right time, it's about how to make the corporate traveller's life easier."

He said basic information could be shared – for example, the minute someone lands in Hong Kong airport, to tell him to take the train and not the taxi; to remind travellers that breakfast and Internet are included in the hotel rate; or to ask why is he still in Shanghai when his flight left two hours ago.

Travel Management Companies now sent itinerary information to travellers "but few people read that", he said.

He said mobile travel services could provide travellers with the latest itinerary, offer a hotel when a multi-city trip is made without a hotel booking, alert the traveller to travel disruptions or offer alternative flights when they have missed a flight.

And imagine too a day when your company will know exactly where you are at any time through a GPS tracking device on your mobile phone?

Actually, it's already possible but that's the dilemma corporations are dealing with – should you be tracked even if you have a corporate mobile phone, asked Thorsen.

Showing a visual of the MTA Mapcast, which it is developing for clients such as Microsoft, Thorsen said the visual information display would change the way corporations and TMCs manage travel.

Within this Mapcast too, corporations could have their own private social network, he said.

Thorsen said his company has not met with a lot of resistance from travellers to their mobile services. "We have 100,000 numbers in our database and the rejection rate is critically low. I think people are saying, if it makes my life easier, why not?"

As for itinerary tracking, he cited a survey done by ConTgo which asked about 8,000 travellers from Finland to Australia if they would like the service – 93% said yes, 3% said no and the rest asked, if you do this, can you add this?

"The mobile phone is the new laptop. The question is, is the travel industry ready for it?"

Yeoh Siew Hoon, one of Asia's most respected travel editors and commentators, writes a regular column on news, trends and issues in the hospitality industry for 4Hoteliers.com.

Siew Hoon, who has covered the tourism industry in Asia/Pacific for the past 20 years, runs SHY Ventures Pte Ltd. Her other writings can be found at www.thetransitcafe.com

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