The Eurostar transportation company is adding its own presence to the mobile marketplace by including a number of different initiatives such as iPhone and Android device apps, a mobile-optimized website, and mobile ticketing.
According to Eurostar – a high-speed passenger rail service in Europe, including the United Kingdom, France, and Belgium – approximately 80 percent of its customers use some form of mobile device when they travel. By providing these consumers with new tools that can be used on those devices, it allows them to check travel schedules, buy their tickets, and then use the mobile ticketing service in order to scan the tickets they have purchased.
Head of Eurostar’s product and partnerships, Chris Jenkin, said that the company first realized that it was important for them to offer mobile services when they noticed the sizeable amount of web traffic that was being generated from mobile devices such as tablets and smartphones. However, at that time, the Eurostar website was not optimized for those devices.
He added that “We also wanted to make sure our consumers had a convenient and seamless way to travel.”
Most of the visits that Eurostar received to its website from mobile sources were from iPhones and Android devices, so the company made those two platforms into its main focus. According to Jenkin, approximately five percent of the traffic to the website was coming through mobile devices before the site had even been optimized.
The free apps are now available at Google’s Android Market and the App Store for Apple.
