Mobileum, the leader in analytics solutions for telecoms, has launched its Roving app at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona. This smartphone app enables mobile operators to evolve beyond traditional roaming and become a key enabler in the travel industry value chain. Rovng leverages Mobileum's widely deployed roaming solutions base across the world by complementing it with analytics through the life cycle of a traveler's journey to offer contextual content from an ecosystem of travel service providers, thereby opening up new revenue opportunities.
According to ITB Academy, travel will grow at 7% in 2016, with over 1.13 billion projected international travelers. However, this growth in travel is not reflected in a proportionate increase in mobile roaming revenues. "Mobile Operators' share of the global travel pie is only 2%. We are trying to change that by making the Mobile Operators a major player in the travel ecosystem," says Avnish Chauhan, Mobileum CTO, and EVP Travel vertical.
Mobileum's proprietary algorithms predict travel up to 40 days prior to departure with over 40% recall accuracy, and can segment travelers based on predicted purpose of travel. This creates an opportunity for the operator to be part of the booking flow earlier in the travel cycle. The result: new revenue streams from digital advertising, premium placement, bookings, and even upselling special roaming packs.
Smartphone is becoming a primary channel for travel bookings; with more than 30% of online travel booking that will be made on mobile devices by 2017. "Rovng delivers a personalized contextual experience and a one-stop-shop as an operator-branded travel app for their subscribers, while generating additional revenue for the operator," Chauhan continues.
Rovng can also power an existing mobile operator app with Travel Insights and EcoSystem APIs by connecting it to Mobileum's cloud-enabled service.
