Luxury Briefing.

HURRAH for Hailo! I’m assuming that all our readers are now savvy of London’s most luxurious app: Hailo turns the world’s most reputable Hackney Carriage network into a private limo service that comes to your home, office, restaurant, hotel or lover’s hideaway haven.

What the cabby chaps who founded Hailo have got bang on is a focus on the customer: the meter doesn’t start until three minutes after your cab arrives, and you’re given a friendly picture of your driver, their name and, best of all, their phone number so that you can connect in case of any difficulty. The kind of luxury we heartily approve of.

But Hailo is just one of the growing number of travel, holiday and hospitality apps that allow us to tailor and craft our experiences in ways hitherto only available to those with time on their hands, or money or both. Now, most of what the Abercombie & Kents of this world were once happy to sort out for a sizeable fee can be downloaded and sorted out at the touch of a finger.

As our Travel and Hospitality Futures report indicates (see p12-13), over half of all travellers now carry a smartphone on their trips and many are using apps to book, organise and indeed review all their travel arrangements.

Flight companies such as American Airlines and Delta are providing holidaymakers with apps that aim to speed up the check-in process. As well as allowing customers to check in, these apps enable them to view departure times and board flights using their smartphone. American Airlines’ mobile app has had more than three million downloads since its launch, most for iOS devices but over 500,000 for Android phones.
“Our customers live in an increasingly mobile world – relying heavily on their mobile devices to stay connected while on the go,” explains Matt Miller from American Airlines. “Mobility is at the heart of much of what we are implementing today dramatically to improve our customers’ interaction with American Airlines.”

Companies such as Booking.com have likewise launched apps that allow consumers to make reservations anytime, anywhere. The Booking.com Tonight app, which is especially useful for last-minute bookings, taps into the company’s inventory of over 200,000 hotels in 165 global destinations, locating available rooms that are in the consumers’ immediate area.

Similarly, Hotel & Car Negotiator from Priceline is changing the way consumers make reservations, observes Austin Watkins, director of marketing at the Four Seasons Hotel Los Angeles at Beverly Hills: “Our hotel has experienced a shift away from telephone reservations to web-based reservations and a proportion of those web-based reservations are made via apps.” The hotel has introduced its own travel app, LuxuryLA, to provide guests with tips on where to find the best places for beauty, dining, entertainment and shopping in the area. The app is a mobile expansion of the hotel’s Luxury LA eConcierge, an iPad-based service that allows guests to browse through recommended local businesses.

Similarly, the St Regis hotel in New York launched its multi-channel E-Butler app last year which, as well as giving guests access to the hotel’s butler and concierge team, provides custom guides to New York by local experts and high-profile restaurateurs.

While travelling, consumers also want to connect with others and share their experiences. The TRYP hotel in New York has created its own social networking service, LobbyFriend, to connect guests with members of staff and other guests for the duration of their stay via their smartphones. Members of the network swap tips, give advice for local places to visit and organise group events.

There are over 585,000 applications available to download from the Apple App Store, 20,000 of which are related to travel. And according to Mintel’s Travel Agents UK December 2011 report, only 14% of British consumers believe that using travel agents is the most convenient way to book. This clearly shows that consumers are looking for alternative ways to organise their travel arrangements.

Does this mark the demise then, of the traditional travel agent? Times will get increasingly tough, perhaps, for the brochure-bound purveyor of the two week family break, but as our ongoing researches across the luxury and retail industries have shown us, those that can successfully deliver service, experience, knowledge and good face-to face engagement continue to flourish. And as Hailo has demonstrated, it’s not just about the technology: what it’s doing is reconnecting you with experienced professionals who know their job and have a sense of pride, and are happy to improve their good old-fashioned service, using new tools.

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