Hospitality Quarterly

Premium content from Atlanta Business Chronicle - by Martin Sinderman, Contributing Writer

Date: Friday, February 25, 2011, 6:00am EST

Tourists and conventioneers that connect to the Internet via smart phone will soon find it easier to access local Web-based visitor information, thanks to a new mobile website being launched by the Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Slated to debut in late February, the new site, developed by ACVB and Brunswick, Ga.-based consultant ITI Marketing, is aimed at optimizing the online experience of iPhone, Android, BlackBerry and other mobile device users as they search for information on, and directions to, local lodging, dining, attractions and events.

The move addresses a growing segment of the public. According to a recent report from Pew Research Center, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, the ranks of people using mobile phones to access the Internet is growing. Pew reports that, as of mid-2010, 40 percent of adults in the U.S. used the Internet, e-mail or instant messaging on a mobile phone, up from 32 percent at the same time in 2009.

This trend is part of growth in mobile Internet access in general, according to Pew. “Taken together, 59 percent of American adults now go online wirelessly using a laptop or cell phone, an increase over the 51 percent of Americans who did so at a similar point in 2009.”

Going mobile is the future, according to Atlanta.net Senior Vice President and General Manager Andrew Wilson, who directs all online initiatives of Atlanta Convention & Visitors Bureau, “And being accessible via the Web to the growing number of devices out there is increasingly important to any business.”

Adapting to smart phones

The characteristics of mobile devices, particularly smart phones, make specialized mobile websites a necessity for optimal useability.

Because of their smaller screens and typically less-robust (than their desktop computer cousins) processing power, smart phones can have trouble loading pages from conventional websites. This is particularly the case with those containing a large amount of information and/or utilizing today’s ubiquitous Flash-based applications, the latter recently derided by Apple CEO Steve Jobs regarding their reliability, security and performance on mobile devices.

ACVB initially tried just tweaking its existing website — which both contains more than 1,000 pages and makes extensive use of Flash technology — to make it more smart phone-friendly, according to Wilson. But taking several of the site’s most-trafficked pages and rendering them in simple HTML format for faster loading proved to be merely a stopgap measure.

After deciding to go mobile, ACVB had to choose whether to set up a mobile website or, alternatively, develop a specialized software application (an “app”) to run on smart phones.

This is a choice many businesses wanting to effectively market themselves through mobile devices have to deal with these days. And generally speaking, mobile website tend to be much easier solutions than apps, according to David Eads, CEO of Mobile Strategy Partners LLC, an Atlanta-based mobile commerce/banking/payments/marketing firm.

“[Mobile websites] don’t offer all the functionality of a native smart phone app,” Eads said. “But they take a lot less effort, require a lot less money, and you don’t have to worry about what smart phones they work/don’t work on, while apps have to be written for specific operation systems.”

For ACVB, going with a mobile website was preferable to the expense of developing an app that it would have to maintain on an ongoing basis with operating-system updates, “which in the mobile world occur on pretty much a weekly basis,” Wilson said. Also, by going with a mobile site, “We are basically cross-platform, independent of any operating system, and most people will be able to access us on any smart phone,” Wilson said.

Visitors accessing ACVB’s www.atlanta.net site via smart phone will be automatically transferred to the new mobile site. Once there, they can make use of the site’s map system to call up location-based information on hotels, restaurants, events and “What’s Hot,” with a “special offers” section planned for roll-out later this year.

The map system is particularly cutting-edge among mobile sites, according to Wilson.

“Everybody has maps, but they basically just use Google maps that open up in a new Web browser,” Wilson said. “We are going to have a fully integrated, navigable map, populated by content that we control, all while staying within one browser session.”

Other metro area CVBs that have made progress on the mobility front include the Alpharetta Convention & Visitors Bureau, whose mobile site, www.awesomealpharetta.mobi, incorporates hotel, dining, shopping and attraction information. The CVB is also currently evaluating adding smart phone apps to its mobile mix, said President and CEO Janet Rodgers.

Meanwhile, the Gwinnett Convention and Visitors Bureau is involved in both mobile website and apps, according to Deputy Director and Marketing Communications Director Lisa Anders.

GCVB launched its mobile site, www.visitgwinnettcounty.mobi, at the end of 2009. Its conventional website “has hundreds of pages, millions of listings, and thousands of pictures,” said Anders, making it difficult to navigate for smart phone users. There’s still some tweaking taking place, she reports, but the process of navigating the new mobile site “is short, sweet, concise and easy for any kind of smart phone.

Source: http://www.bizjournals.com/atlanta/