Various features built into the mobile phone like GPS make it possible to understand the needs of the customer and tailor the user experience according to their immediate need. In a recent survey conducted by Google, an astonishing 87% of users use the Smart phones to either research that travel or book tickets online and do online recharge. Mobile phone apps are smart enough to understand the needs of the consumer and suggest trip destinations, reviews posted by other travelers, photographs and hotspots that the user can visit during the travel. Also one of the biggest advantages of these travel websites is that they can bundle other products like hotel rooms, car rentals, and trip consultants during the ticket booking process. This provides a huge opportunity to do a lot of cross selling and up selling for these websites. It is not surprising that operators in the space are taking advantage of this opportunity. Hence recharge and ticketing websites selling an entire experience and not just tickets.

Operators are taking advantage of various mobile platforms to reach their target consumers. Apps are being developed in Android, iPhone, Windows and BlackBerry platforms. While currently the number of mobile transactions may feel low, that trend is definitely on an upswing. The travel portals expect more than 60% of their revenues come from smart phones by 2015. I number is it about 15%.

However, the key challenges that these travel portals need to overcome in order to be ready for the mobile revolution. Mobile payments in India are still in an early development phase and many banks and payment gateways which process payments through credit cards, debit cards and net banking did not really have mobile optimised interfaces.

This will pose a big challenge when a user is trying to book a ticket since the interfaces of the travel portals and the payment gateways will not be seamlessly integrated. Also currently only big-ticket items like plane tickets are seeing bookings through mobile phones. Train and bus tickets still form a small percentage of the mobile pie.

Not to be left behind telecom operators like Aircel, Airtel, Idea and Vodafone have also been introducing mobile ticket booking facility into their services. Smart phone spot from these telecom providers come with mobile ticket booking systems pre-installed on the phones. Subscribers also have the ability to book tickets by sending a simple SMS to a predetermined number if they do not have the ticket booking app installed on the Smart phones. In this scenario payment becomes easier because the charges can directly be applied to the mobile bills at the end of the month. This is good news for travelers across the country looking for a convenient way to book tickets online.