As this weekend's weather ("snowmageddon") becomes typically hyperbolic headlines news on the
BBC,
SKY and our national newspapers (
Mirror and
Independent, for example), as the
Met Office issue official "Amber" (be prepared) weather warnings across the country, we were interested to note the implications for travellers, and how mobile marketing can begin to play its part.
British Airways has already (morning of Friday, before much of the snow has even started) cancelled 60 flights from the UK - triggering automatic
SMS text alert messages to be sent to passengers who have opted in to receive these alerts.
And, as you can see from the image for this blog post,
Gatwick Airport has also added a travel alert to it's
mobile site home page advising passengers to contact their airlines for advice on flights, and to ensure they allow extra time to get to the airport given the likely disruuption to road and rail services as well.
Gatwick's mobile site, launched in the summer of 2012, was designed with the travelling visitor to the airport in mind, and has a site navigation hierarchy focussed on that site visitor's needs and expectations. Results in the first 6 months have already shown great success, and this latest tweak to the site highlights the reasons why.
Integrated into Gatwick's main website CMS, the content update is created by Gatwick's in-house comms team and automatically updated on the mobile site. As soon as someone opens the website on their mobile phone (it automatically detects mobile devices and re-directs them to the mobile version of the site) this alert is highlighted and open at the top of the home page, providing the sort of useful on-the-go information the travelling public has come to expect.