London-based Company Launches Mobile Web Site for Mossel Bay
London’s World Travel Group, which owns the prestigious World Travel Awards and more than 600 mobile ‘city.mobi’ web sites - or interactive, cell-phone-based city guides - has launched a site for Mossel Bay at http://mosselbay.city.mobi/.
“We had no idea that city.mobi had us on their radar, but we’re incredibly excited and very grateful to them for having set up this site,” said Mossel Bay Tourism’s Marcia Holm.
Mobi sites are designed to provide the continuous flow of information to which consumers have become accustomed, and are specifically formatted for use on the small screens of mobile phones.
“We see a great advantage in being linked to a world-wide service like city.mobi, because it means that users only need to register once and to remember one address - and then, as they move around, all they need to do is navigate to the city or town in which they find themselves.
“The system is easy and it works to a simple formula - so searching for information in, say, Johannesburg or New York, will be the same as searching in Mossel Bay,” said Ms. Holm.
Information on city.mobi’ sites includes events, news, places to visit, eat and stay, and essential links to travel, emergency services, and banks.
Local content researcher for city.mobi, David Walker, said that the service provided, “Information in the palm of your hand - and with 2 billion internet-enabled mobile phones it’s crucial that organisations should be able to respond to travellers.
“All nine of the 2010 Host Cities for the World Cup - Cape Town, Bloemfontein, Durban, Johannesburg, Nelspruit, Polokwane, Port Elizabeth, Pretoria, and Rustenburg - already have info on city.mobi sites (http://capetown.mobi/; http://bloemfontein.mobi/, etc.), and we’re now starting to load information for the base camps like Mossel Bay, as well as for other towns in South Africa.”
He said that a complete list of sites could be found on the city.mobi section of the World Travel Group’s site - http://www.worldtravelgroup.com/.
Chris Whitfield, who handles marketing for city.mobi out of their London offices, said, “We encourage local small businesses to add their listings to their specific city.mobi site. This will give them access to a new advertising medium and will increase the users’ chances of finding what they are looking for.”
Local small businesses can add their listings on the home page of the Mossel Bay site - http://mosselbay.city.mobi/.
City.mobi’s easy-to-use system is interactive, and users are able to add simple reviews to the products listed on the site.
“This means that travellers will be able to share up-to-date information - which is becoming more and more important as the world moves deeper into the information age, and people are more likely to accept information from their peers than from advertisers,” said Ms. Holm.
“We welcome city.mobi and look forward to providing them with the depth of content that they require.”