A quarter of all online corporate travel bookings will be made by a mobile device by 2017, according to research from TMC Carlson Wagonlit Travel.
The study, Tap into mobile: managed travel in the digital economy, showed that both travellers and travel managers expect mobile booking to increase significantly over the next five years.
It also predicts that mobile bookings will more than double in the next two years.
The CWT research, which is an investigation into the impact of mobile in the managed travel space, showed it took up to eight years for online booking tools to reach the same level of activity that mobile is expected to achieve in the next three years.
The study highlights the high expectations that both travellers and travel managers have for mobile travel services and their awareness of the advantages and benefits it will bring.
Travel alerts were found to be “very important” to travellers, who rank them the third most important mobile service feature, after flight status updates and itinerary information. And travellers in the Asia Pacific region were found to place more importance on mobile bookings (62% consider it important or critical), compared with North America (55%) and EMEA (45%).
The study also highlighted that an estimated average of 62 per cent of travellers already carry company smartphones and 56 per cent of companies surveyed already, or plan to, have a ‘Bring your own device’ policy.
Globally, travel managers also consider the potential impact of mobile on the travel programme to be high, rating it 6.8 overall on a scale of one to 10.
David Moran, CWT executive vice president, global marketing and enterprise strategy, said: “We have been planning for this shift for some time and are getting ready to launch new mobile services, such as mobile booking through CWT To Go later this year.”
Earlier this week (July 8) CWT announced that Martine Gerow has been appointed executive vice president and chief financial officer.