Trinity Mobile is a company that handles a combination of mobile ticketing and marketing through SMS and barcodes. It has mobile ticketing deals in place with several transport agencies, most importantly Austrian Airlines and British Midlands (BMI). And the company has announced today that it has seen a massive 1200% growth in the number of mobile boarding passes sent to passengers in 2009.
What’s the deal?
If you haven’t encountered them before, mobile boarding passes are a very simple and very useful idea. Even if you check-in online for a flight, you have to print out a paper pass and bring it with you. Or else you can collect it at a kiosk at the airport. With a mobile boarding pass, you do your check-in over the mobile internet, and your pass is sent to you as a mobile barcode. Participating airlines will have scanners set up at every security point in the airport, so all you need to board the plane is your mobile phone.
Trinity Mobile has announced that the amount of mobile boarding passes it has sent has risen from 50,000 in 2008 to 600,000 in 2009. It claims that it didn’t even really market the service that much – uptake seems to have occurred simply because customers really wanted it.
What we think?
Mobile ticketing for airlines is growing at a steady and pleasing rate – and that rate seems to be accelerating. In fact, for at least a year or two now we’ve all known that mobile barcodes have a good future with airlines. Hopefully use of mobile ticketing will spread to other transport industries like bus and rail – and companies like Masabi are doing their level best in that regards.
