Siemens' mobile Internet-based travel portals

Using your mobile phone to search for a hire car, reserve a hotel room or change a flight reservation will soon be a reality. The newly founded Siemens Mobile Travel Solutions GmbH develops tailor-made Internet travel portals for mobile phones, enabling travel itineraries to be read on the move and bookings to be changed in seconds. The market potential for mobile travel portals is estimated at over US$1.5 billion by 2003.

Those who travel the most, will benefit the most claims Reinhold Rehm, Director of Siemens Mobile Travel Solutions. "Our new services will make everything so much easier," he said.

"The offering is aimed at mobile operators who are seeking interesting applications for WAP and later for UMTS. Large companies and airlines will also save millions by using mobile travel management," explains Lothar Pauly, Member of the Group Executive Management of Siemens Information and Communication Mobile.

"Thanks to these new services, airlines will be able to reduce costs by factoring weather delays into their processes a lot earlier," Pauly added.

The mobile travel portals are independent of any mobile radio standard and use the GSM mobile radio standard, Short Messaging Service (SMS) and Wireless Application Protocol (WAP). The range of services available will grow with the introduction of the new GPRS and UMTS standards.

The new mobile services are based on the "Scenic Interactive Travel" travel solution developed by SBS. Around 60,000 Siemens employees already use this e-commerce application to book flights, hotel rooms and hire cars via the Siemens-internal intranet.