For instance, a customer may be booking intra-city cabs twice a day but it is unlikely that the same customer will book hotel rooms multiple times in a week
It is still too early to decide whether mobile apps are more important that websites because different customers have different preferences, said industry experts at a conference on the travel sector organised by industry body FICCI.
According to Kaushik Dasgupta, head of industry, travel, Google India, around 70 per cent of the data queries related to travel currently are happening on a mobile device.
“In Yatra, we have placed our bets on both the parts. In the last two years or so the amount of traffic that we are getting on the mobile web is also growing. Right now we are not making a bet on one of the other but investing in all of them,” said Himanshu Varma, chief technology officer, Yatra Inc.
The experts stressed upon a toothbrush test pattern, suggesting that the relevance of app totally depends on the amount of engagement a user has with the service offered in a given day.
“Overall mobile definitely is becoming an indispensable thing. People are booking on the go and ok booking last minute,” said Rahul Chaudhary, co-founder of Treebo Hotels.
Chaudhary also referred to e-commerce firm Myntra’s move in 2015 when the company had decided to go app only. It eventually had to relaunch its website.
The company had argued the the website was required since the customers wanted to see the products on a larger screen.
“The debate between app and web is less important… hotels are not booked on the toothbrush pattern but may be weekly by many customers,” he said adding that this is when a progressive web app (PWA) comes handy.
“The balance has to be somewhere in between. What really works for us is mobile website,” said Anshu Sarin, chief executive officer of Keys Hotel.
According to the experts, the argument totally varies from one sector to another. The question to be asked was whether a company wanted to acquire a customer or retain the customer.
For instance, a customer may be booking intra-city cabs twice a day but it is unlikely that the same customer will book hotel rooms multiple times in a week.
Talking about the issue of data privacy, Dasgupta said that Google took data privacy and protection of its users “very seriously”.
Acknowledging that there has been instances in the past with regards to payments, Sarin said that all the brands are building out competencies that there are no leakages. “There are a lot of investments that all brands are doing from a data security standpoint,” she said.
