EyeforTravel Research Case Study
The School of Mobile Vol. 2 - The Detail Chapter 1 - The Travel Buying Cycle
‘Lifestyle’ side of things. In addi�on they have a U.S. team that has developed a hotel booking app for iPhone
to try and understand where that market is heading.
• LEVERAGING THE LAST SECOND

The core of lastminute.com’s business are last second offerings. Things that are going to occur in the next
few nights or days, on the weekends etc. The aim is to fulfil this in the mobile context en�rely. Not everything
sits within the mobile space but lastminute.com are gradually moving in that direc�on. For instance,
considering systems of �cke�ng. Some events/a�rac�ons require you to have a physical �cket, some work
with a confirma�on number (which can be supplied via mobile).
Mobile vs Mobility: Cross channel thinking and
addressing convergence
With handsets becoming increasingly advanced, the line between mobiles
and portable PC’s is becoming very quickly blurred. If you have a high-end
phone you don’t actually need to go to a specially designed mobile site
(although it will offer an op�mised experience) as you can u�lise a normal
website using your browser. Equally, if you are accessing mobile stuff from a
handset you may not actually be out and about, this is a commonly observed
behaviour.
So, the assump�on that mobile is for stuff you do on the go and the other
websites is stuff you do when you are si�ng at home does not always hold
true especially in light of advancements in mobile browser technology.
For lastminute.com it is important to be quite careful to avoid falling into a
trap of developing offerings too narrowly that do not take account of how
people are actually using their devices. lastminute.com is tailored to serve
those customers who are out and about and on the go but we are not too
bothered about whether they are accessing our services from a phone or a
“We do not know where
Laptop.
they are going to be.
It is important to take account of the fact an experience moves between a
They want it to be with
number of different channels over the course of that experience. For example,
their language and their
if you are planning an evening out, you may start it at your computer in your
setup but they want to
office then you con�nue it through text messages and email on your mobile,
see informa�on related
thus it moves between devices and channels. It is important when developing
to where they are in that
these kinds of offerings to think of usage pa�erns and that people do not
moment in �me. This can
s�ck to just one channel throughout the process.
include immediate close-by
informa�on as well as info
Don’t get caught up on pigeonholed technology. One of the things
relevant more general to
lastminute.com have found when it comes to restaurant bookings is that
the city that they are in. So
when you treat customers as moving around you can no longer target them
that is what we are trying
with different websites in different countries. Most online retail is country-by-
to move towards”
country and there are mul�ple sites for each country. In reality, if someone

is travelling in France from the UK they will want to access the site in English
- Marko Balabanovic,
but book products and services for where they are France. The language
Head of Innova�on,
needs to be shown independent to the offerings shown in a given situa�on.
lastminute.com labs
Where lastminute.com are trying to head towards strategically is to assume
that every user is travelling and footloose and using mul�ple channels.
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