In my lonely vigil supporting Location Based Services, I came across this interesting, if a little dry, article about LBS, tourism and hotels in Hospitality Net.
The basic idea is that hotels will be in a prime position to promote LBS hotel concierge services to tourists (which includes business travellers in this definition). Therefore, they can also influence what these services might be. The study was conducted among only 323 tourists in Lausanne and Geneva, Switzerland, so we should be careful about extrapolating this to a worldwide audience. But the conclusions are nonetheless interesting, if a little unsurprising.
Here’s the main chart.
The two audiences most likely to take up services are traditional business travellers and “techie male travellers”, who are more likely to have PDAs or smartphones and are used to getting information online.
But, for me, the most promising element about the study is that no one seems to question IF people want LBS concierge services. It’s more of a question of WHAT they want and WHO will use them initially.
I think we can also take what services they think they say they want with a big pinch of salt. The interesting applications have yet to emerge for LBS, so they end up choosing those that they can imagine a use for today.
For instance, anyone who has ever traveled alone on business knows that eating on your own is a pretty boring business. So social/business networking software could really come into their own here. As an aside, I’ve also always thought that this would be a nice opportunity for airlines and business travellers. If you complete a short online profile, they could seat you next to people you might find interesting to network with – or put you with other people who specifically didn’t want to talk.
The other opportunity that seems to be missing in the hotel survey is adult services, but since Carlo is our resident porn specialist (FleshBot just lurve linking to his posts), maybe I’ll leave him to explore this another time.
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