BULLETINS

Recent reports indicate that people are back to travelling around a lot and in turn the airline industry is back to growth stages. Along with the technology this domain is getting better in the case of interaction with users. Now it’s more flexible than the past scenario. Today customers have the power to choose between variety of service providers and services.
Integrating OTA onto mobile platforms is not a new idea. But it is not so common. Only a few players are in this area. Particular mobile gadgets can be designed for application or can be integrated into common mobile devices. These further helps travelers to search, choose, plan and book their trip for the journey. Major smart phones can support this and their associated services. Advantages of mobile ticketing includes Reduced costs of ticket printing/mailing, improved consumer convenience, reduced infrastructure costs,  increased revenue by increasing accessibility to tickets. Mobile Payment options like Premium SMS/USSD based transactional payments, Direct Mobile billing which includes Direct Operator Billing, Online Wallets and Credit Cards.
 Now that AT&T and Verizon have decided to turn smart phones into credit cards, you may be asking yourself, "Is this really a good idea?"  “But the integrity of a transaction is only as good as the device itself," says Dan Hoffman, the CTO of SMobile. You have to look at mobile devices in the same way you look at PCs. Smartphone credit card users have to install some form of remote-wipe application that will let them erase all data on their phone if they ever lose it. Although remote-wipe capabilities have been staples of Research in Motion's BlackBerry devices for years, they have only recently come to more popular consumer devices such as the Apple iPhone and devices based on Google's open source Android operating system. In addition to remote wipe, users should subscribe to some sort of mobile backup service so they can retrieve their data to a new device after wiping out data from their old device.
Another risk in this is the malicious applications that will be downloaded onto smart phone platforms that can sniff out credit card information and use those credentials to commit fraud. Right now it is difficult to sort out or filter the safe applications. Features like thumb impression or retinal scan can be used by smart phones to make it safe. Also to prevent this, users need to not only take care about the types of apps they download onto their phones but to also install antivirus, antimalware and firewall programs onto their devices.
 Let us hope that this will be advanced in a simple as well as more secure and in a user friendly way, so that customers of all types can use this service easily. Surely this will make Online Travel portals more popular among flyers.