PayPal urges travel firms to tap mobile sales channels

SINGAPORE is transforming into a hotbed for mobile transactions, but travel companies have so far been slow on the uptake of technology to penetrate this fast-emerging market, according to PayPal.

Rahul Shinghal, director, mobile, PayPal Asia Pacific said: “Travel merchants really stand to lose out if they don’t adopt mobile commerce (m-commerce). We’ve seen consumers making sizeable purchases on travel sites that have not even been optimised for mobile purchases. The demand is certainly there, but (travel) suppliers have been relatively slow to react.”

According to a joint study by Nielsen and PayPal, m-commerce expenditure among Singaporeans is forecast to grow tenfold to US$2.5 billion by 2015, as Internet-enabled mobile devices become more prevalent in their day-to-day lives.

The study also revealed that 11 per cent of smartphone users were willing to purchase airline tickets via mobile apps, with another six per cent open to buying travel packages. Comparatively, the proportion of tablet users willing to make airline bookings with mobile apps was higher (15 per cent), while for travel packages it was nine per cent.

Elias Ghanem, Paypal’s managing director for South-east Asia & India, said: “We will be marketing aggressively to the travel trade, and are optimistic about our chances in gaining more business from this sector.”

Dickson Seow, director, corporate communications, PayPal Asia Pacific said even though OTAs and hotels acknowledged the importance of gearing up for m-commerce, some were only just beginning to optimise their mobile presence and source for appropriate payment solutions.

Seow added: “Airlines remain averse to adopting mobile technology, as they are less certain about how it can be utilised to capture impulse spend, and what is needed to set it up successfully.”

Sourced :TTG Asia