Handy Group set to form "deep links" with several national airlines both in the UK and US


The market is "slow to see mobile Internet as a serious channel" and there is
"lack of 'sexy' content". These forthright opinions were put forward by Michael
Lacy, chief executive officer, Handy Group (UK) Ltd during the last year's
Travel Distribution Technology held in London in November last year

A year later, as EyeforTravel.com's Ritesh Gupta again got in touch with Lacy
to check on how the situation has changed, he says, "Yes, 12 months ago we were
pushing on locked doors and getting the response 'lets wait until mobile
develops as a serious channel'. Today, as Handy, we are being welcomed as the
leaders in the field and there's no doubt that all the major players are
developing a mobile strategy and are more than keen to talk and learn from
us."

Last year, referring to user profile and trends, he stated that the data
retail market is dominated by male 15-19 year olds for tones, music,
videoclips, soft-porn etc. Also, handsets were patchy with more than 100 types,
and 3G is getting there.

"Those 15-19 years olds are now a year older for a start and looking at more
serious content. However these products still dominate the world of mobile
transactions but mature products are at last making headway. To a large extent
this is strengthened by the forward thinking approach of networks such as O2
with i-mode which has 50 million subscribers worldwide. HandyTraveller our
mobile travel portal is on i-mode in the UK and Ireland and will launch with
the other European i-mode operators from December," he says.

The company is set to launch the second phase of its product line-up which
features 'global' product allowing it to partner with any mobile network in the
world and have relevant product to that market.

"We have both deep links and intermediary feeds with low cost airlines and
last-minute rate hotels servicing more than 50 countries with 600 points of
origin and destination. We are soon to announce partner status with one of the
worlds largest car rental suppliers and deep links with several national
airlines both in the UK and US," he says.

The technology the company utilises to provide the HandyTraveller service both
as a web-based travel portal and as a mobile phone based portal is available to
business partners as a 'white label' product.

Lacy acknowledges that this service has been very well received, particularly
so in the last four months.
"We plan to launch five services on behalf of white-label clients in the first
half of '07 but am bound by contract not to say who. What we do is really
specialised, keeping up with all the latest handsets and software releases,
making complex browse and book services useable on a mobile phone and keeping
the transfer of data compressed to make it both fast and secure is not easy. It
makes much more sense for company to contract with Handy to build their service
- for one thing they know it'll work because HandyTraveller proves it."

PDAs are increasingly being thought of as computer platforms which can run
software applications, through which travel content can be sold.

On new platforms becoming a viable distribution channel, he says, "Only in the
same way a mobile can. To view a full size site on a PDA is still a terrible
user experience. We have a mobile xHTML site optimised for PDA's that makes
really good use of Windows Mobile and Pocket PC. We strongly feel that Travel
like many other products are best sold over browser based services rather than
a user having to download a software application which is why we utilise WML,
xHTML and cHTML. We detect the level of the browser installed on any handset
accessing our service and supply the most appropriate site for the users phone
or PDA that will correctly render for the screen size and installed operating
system."

"Handy Group is developing a hugely powerful CRM that handles all these added
features - with GIS and particularly the cross boundary GIS services to be made
available from the European Galileo system, we not only will know who is
accessing our services but where they are at the time and with the ability to
instantly push context sensitive deals back to them on a device from which they
can instantly buy," says Lacy.

On future projections, he says, "There are many exciting things we can do with
the mobile device but ultimately it will come down to what the consumer wants to
do with it. Our job is to make sure it works, to innovate for the benefit of the
consumer and to ensure the customer interface and experience is exceptional. By
doing so, this will determine just how far we can go. Undoubtedly the very
least mobile will give us is the ability to buy internet products whenever and
wherever we may be, at the most our mobiles will become the single device we
use to manage our lives."