Embracing technology a WAPper of a challenge

This isn’t another story about WAP, the hot new Wireless Application Protocol that’s supposed to change the way we buy and sell travel. Enough has been published about the emerging standard to do a book on it. But being a member of the MTV generation, I just don’t have that kind of attention span, and you probably don’t either.

Instead, this is about how one site, Hotelguide.com, integrated WAP into its business well in advance of its European competitors and months – possibly years – before its American counterparts will.

The Lucerne, Switzerland, startup recently made its directory of 60,000 hotels available to WAP-enabled mobile phone users, and plans to offer advanced booking capabilities through the system soon.

“With WAP, users can conduct an interactive search of our hotel database by specifying the city of the hotel name,” says Bob Lawson, Hotelguide.com’s director of new media. “It’s much like a simplified version of the search they might otherwise conduct on a Web site. They can then select a hotel from the list we provide them and then dial the hotel directly using the phone number we give them.”

Here’s what getting on board the WAP bandwagon to the Web taught Hotelguide.com:

Get a head start – not a false start. Lawson and his team had been tracking the incipient technology for “well over a year” and then made a commitment to WAP six months ago. As he puts it, “It was the right time to jump.” But Hotelguide.com took a chance, he admits. “We wanted to be first, but of course we wanted to wait long enough to make sure the standards had taken shape before we put a lot of time and money into development.” The next six months will tell if the calculated risk will pay off for the company.

‘Build it and they will come’ isn’t without fringe benefits. “In a way, being first is more for image than to fill a real market need,” Lawson admits. “The number of actual WAP users is still extremely small. But by being first, we can show the travel industry that we’re a player and we can show our existing users and customers that we’re on the cutting edge and we’re always making the necessary effort to stay out in front of the curve.” In other words, even if WAP is a flop, Hotelguide.com will benefit.

Bend but don’t break. When developing its WAP system, manufacturers like Nokia and Ericsson were making changes to the standards “almost on a daily basis.” Adds Lawson: “They were just trying to get it all working, like everyone else. So we had to be flexible and learn to roll with the punches.” At times the process became frustrating, because of Hotelguide.com’s size. The manufacturers weren’t about to change what they did for “us small guys,” he notes.

It’s never over. Changes continue to happen “fast and furious,” says Lawson. “Things won’t really slow down until a few generations of the phones have come and gone off the market.” He likens working on WAP to developing Web sites during the early days of the Internet. The difference is that it took a few years for the Internet to develop as a commercial medium – with WAP, “it has been compressed into only a few months.”

Lawson is heeding his own advice. This year his company plans to add French, German and Italian versions of its site. It’s also integrating Global Positioning System (GPS) technology into its database so that it can deliver hotel information based on a user’s geographical data.

That kind of 21st Century thinking is enough to catch even this Gen-Xers interest.

Christopher Elliott is the author of Scammed: How to Save Your Money and Find Better Service in a World of Schemes, Swindles, and Shady Deals. Critics have called it “eye-opening” and “inspiring” — it’ll “grab your attention and won’t let go.” Order your copy now on Amazon, Barnes & Noble or iTunes.

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