New Mobile Apps Offer Air Booking, Itinerary Management

Leisure online booking site OneTravel this week released an iPhone application called Wanderlust that enables full air searching and booking capabilities, functionality that remains elusive in the corporate travel environment.

Meanwhile, Amadeus today announced it has begun testing new mobile applications for its CheckMyTrip online itinerary management tool, which works with reservations that have been booked through the Amadeus global distribution system, according to Amadeus North America director of product management and support services Alix Arguelles. The tool is being tested on BlackBerry and is available as a free downloadable application for the iPhone through the App Store.

These are the latest of a string of corporate travel applications and mobile versions of online tools that suppliers have released that help travelers manage itineraries, approve and submit expense reports, book hotels and change flights.

With thousands of applications hitting mobile operating systems' e-commerce storefronts, travelers and travel managers are seeking an increasing amount of mobile booking functionality. Many travel managers see mobile devices as a channel to build policy compliance and gather more information about traveler behavior.

Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh, speaking at this week's Strategic Travel Symposium, co-hosted by Business Travel News and the National Business Travel Association, said not having an application that allows an original air transaction to occur is a technology limitation.

That limitation is easy to overcome, he added, but questions of content display and commercial agreements involving a new booking channel can arise. Singh said that in a system of thousands of flight options, tens of thousands of hotels and a large number of rental car options, the question is, "How do you present all this information on a very tiny screen in a very efficient model? There is a little bit of technology, and there also is a little bit of figuring out the right business model and that impact with the TMCs."