Survey Reveals Canadian Business Travellers Aren’t Leveraging Smartphone Apps

Concur has released some interesting Canadian mobile stats, based on a survey of over 1000 business travellers in November 2011:

Mobile device and app usage
· Nearly three quarters (74%) use laptops more than once a day
· More than two thirds (64%) use smartphones more than once a day and 45% use them hourly
· Less than 20 per cent (16%) use tablets more than once a day
· More than one quarter (26%) do not use mobile applications to plan business travel
· Respondents from Ontario and British Columbia use mobile apps least often to book accommodations (30% and 27%), and plan their itinerary (29% and 18%)
· Respondents from Quebec and Alberta use mobile apps most often to assist with trip planning

The hassles of business travel
· Almost one third (30%) of Canadian business travellers say that waiting in lines is the biggest hassle
· British Columbians find that last minute changes to their itinerary is the biggest hassle (16%)
· Overall, 25-44 year olds are most concerned with the travel expense reporting process

For small businesses, accurate detail of expenses is critical, but can also be painstaking. Concur’s free iPhone app allows existing clients to login and easily track expenses, such as by taking pictures of receipts and uploading them for expense reports.

There are lots of mobile travel apps available (Priceline, Air Canada, etc), but nobody uses data roaming due to the constant fear of a massive phone bill if data is turned on ‘by accident’. That being said, traveling to urban areas can be quite easy as WiFi hotspots are plentiful. Our recent trip to NYC this summer had lots of stops to Starbucks or Apple Stores to ‘check email’.

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