Business traveler Mike Monroe no longer rummages through his bag at the airline counter fishing for his flight ticket or confirmation number.
The consultant from Lakeland, Fla., has gone paperless, thanks to Continental Airlines’ electronic boarding passes. Once he checks in online, the carrier e-mails a bar code to his phone. That code is scanned at security checkpoints and gates instead of a boarding pass. “It takes away a lot of annoyances.”
Monroe also uses his BlackBerry for airlines’ flight-change alerts, routing all calls into one number provided by Google Voice, turn-by-turn driving directions when he’s behind the wheel and watching TV on Slingbox when he has downtime. He also carries an iPod Touch — like an iPhone but without the phone — to make international calls using Skype, get the latest sports scores and weather from Viigo and access Urbanspoon’s reviews of nearby restaurants. “Nothing really cutting edge,” Monroe says, “but I’m just trying every day to reduce the stress.”
Monroe is a member of a growing army of tech-savvy travelers whose smartphones are transforming their travel habits. Beyond online maps and travel guides, travelers are turning to their phones to look up aircraft seat configuration, track taxis, reply to early hotel check-in requests, order room service and locate nearby colleagues.
Few Americans remain untouched by the effects of the mobile Internet. But the tech industry’s core mission of getting people to lead untethered lives inevitably invites road warriors such as Monroe as early adopters of all their bells and whistles. The travel industry has responded with some of the most innovative applications available on smartphones. And more are coming.
Airlines and hotels are refining their mobile Web sites and creating applications, or “apps,” for downloading to popular phone models, such as iPhones, BlackBerrys and Google Android phones. Entrepreneurial software developers are rolling out…