EyeforTravel Research Case Study
The School of Mobile Vol. 2 - The Detail Chapter 1 - The Travel Buying Cycle
lastminute.com:
Re-engaging with a Vengeance
Key Highlights:
The Mobile Journey….
• In 2008 lastminute.com noted a number of trends that caused
Early 2000’s: Mobile engagement
them to re-engage with mobile
begins
• One of these was the ready availability of LBS which led to their
fonefood applica�on
2003: Mobile portal introduced
with LBS, booking over WAP and
• It is important to realise that mobile does not only mean ‘on the
interac�ve TV.
mobile phone’ but also incorporates cross pla�orm u�lisa�on in
mul�ple countries and mul�ple languages
2008: Recent developments in • The key advantage of mobile with LBS is being able to deliver
mobile services and technology services to the consumer in their present context even though
inspire a re-engagement with
that may change from minute to minute
mobile culmina�ng in the launch
of fonefood as the first of a suite of
new-genera�on mobile offerings
What were the changes that led to re-engagement?

Last year a number of things happened which led lastminute.com to
believe that mobile was coming of age:
• Unlimited data packages started becoming accepted, affordable
and somewhat commonplace
• The quality of the browsers were becoming be�er and of sufficient
quality whereby consumers can have quite a comfortable mobile
internet user experience somewhat comparable to what they
are used to on a desktop computer. Both of these things have
Lastminute.com’s vision for the
future:
certainly been influenced by the iPhone which has driven the
uptake of unlimited data packages and raised the bar in terms of
• Post booking communica�ons
the browser-led user experience.
and customer rela�ons.
• Inspira�on on the travel side. • Another key aspect is the increase in screen size and resolu�on
• Inspira�on on the lifestyle side.
which is clearly much greater than even a few years ago.
• Always being there with com-
lastminute.com are seeing that the majority of mobile web usage
pelling op�ons at the last second.
(not just people checking their email but people actually browsing
and going through to sites like lastminute.com) is coming from
from larger screen-size, higher-end handsets, a lot from the
“…we are really on the path of iPhone. So there is a very clear trend here that these enablers
doing as much as we can to make
have led to a genuine increase in usage.
people’s life as smooth, simple and
convenient as possible so people • iPhone has had a discernible ‘boot-strap’ effect across the industry
can just go and do something
par�cularly in terms of se�ng the user-interface benchmark
without having to wait for a bit
of post to arrive. We will be taking • A fourth enabler iden�fied by lastminute.com is the evolu�on of
advantage where we see opportu-
Loca�on-based-services. If you go a few years back, the only way
ni�es but only if the technology is
to access LBS was through the phone operator companies. This
proven and it actually works con-
sistently. We will try and ac�vely
is where they could locate the customer and tell you where they
encourage people to move on to
are. This however was not a cheap or convenient exercise and had
mobile” limited func�onality. You would have to pay per lookup which
- Marko Balabanovic, Head of
would only work when the customer was not roaming outside
innova�on, lastminute.com labs
their home network, which is certainly not ideal for the travel
industry.
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