Travel Blog - Mr & Mrs Smith Boutique & Luxury Hotels

It’s not all luxury hotel breaks and glamorous destinations at Mr & Mrs Smith, sometimes we have to focus on the more serious business of, well, business. Last week I popped in on a presentation hosted by The Daily Telegraph and sponsored by T-Mobile. The speakers were, naturally, a rep from T-mobile (Ollie Chivers, head of business marketing), and Professor Jim Norton, head of e-business at the Institute of Directors). The topic was the rather prosaic-sounding: ‘Boosting profitability through mobile working’.

A lot of the discussion centred on how small companies can change the way their employees work by embracing mobile technology  - the mobilisation of everything; not just email but complete virtual offices, office-less sales forces, home-workers, employees operating on other continents from the main HQ, yadiyadiyada. Much of the morning’s talk involved issues such as working on the go and managing one’s work life balance, but the subject of the consumer quickly reared its head - predictably, given that this was the day that Google held its UK launch of the much-anticipated G1, its answer to Apple’s iPhone. Because the G1 is built around Google’s open-source Android operating system, software developers and sites like Mr & Mrs Smith  will have the opportunity to develop applications (as we did with BlackBerry) and be creative - something I think the closed-platform iPhone stifled a little. Our mobile tech-monkeys are already conducting their experiments, so watch this space.

A few pub-chat-worthy stats were thrown around during the session:

• 32 billion emails are sent on the move every day.
• If Facebook were a country it would be the 11th largest country in the world (nudging Mexico out of the position, and coming in behind Japan).
• A new blog is created every second.

So, are we all going to end up doing pretty much everything through our mobiles? Well with every Google innovation, with every platform created that uses open source - something anyone can develop against, we get a little bit closer.

I was also interested to learn about one such recently created Android application: Shopsavvy. This nifty little programme lets you scan the bar code on any product in a shop using your phone camera, then brings up a list of local stores that have the same product cheaper, as well as prices from online retailers.

This got me thinking - what other applications might we expect to see in future? I’d like to see the Japanese purchase model come our way, so I could buy anything through my mobile and be able to leave my credit cards at home, just scan and spend. I did a quick poll of Smith HQ to see what innovations our team would like to see on their phones. This was the result:

If your phone could do anything, what would you want it to do?

Juliet:

• Work in my kitchen. Surely not too much of a far-fetched 21st-century request?
• I guess a couple years ago I would have liked it if it identified whether the cute guy on the Tube was single and whether he’s a seat up or down kinda guy.
• It can be hard finding a half-decent boozer in a new neighbourhood and a good service would be like the one we provide for BlackBerry for boutique-hotel seekers but navigating you to hip hostelries when you’re away from home.
• When you want to buy a bottle of wine it’d be nice to pinpoint off-licences/supermarkets that sell one you like. We got stung £9 in Plymouth for an undrinkable Ribena-like rosé. Although with Plymouth I suspect there wasn’t a cheeky little St Aubin hiding around the corner in a more upscale establishment.
• Something like those track recognition applications (referenced in my Cotswolds88 Hotel review) for D-list celebs? Louiza and I saw an actor in the bar there but couldn’t work out for the life of us who she was or what she’d been in. Image-activated-insto-IMDB would have been helpful.

James:

• Become my flight ticket and passport so I don’t have to continually fumble around to find them in the airport
• Act as a universal translator that can record my question, then play it back in any foreign language, and vice versa.

Lucy:

• Pre-delete spam texts
• Automatically make restaurant reservations for me
• Securely place and pay for takeaway orders.

Rufus:

• If I could have a mobile phone that could both hold a library of films and not require a memory drive the size of a breezeblock, then that would make me a very happy man indeed
• If it could also send out some kind of hostile force-field to repel local telecom providers whenever I left the country, then that would also make me joyous - and richer. I’m sick of getting back to the UK to find out I’ve been charged £20 for picking up a message from my mum telling me to have a nice trip and be careful about drinking the water…

Anthony:

• Automatically reject improperly punctuated text messages, with a stern reprimand to the sender
• Be able to GPS-sync with anyone else’s phone by entering their number, so we both know where each other are at any time, or if someone’s going to be late
• Scan wine labels to automatically generate tasting notes and average retail prices.

Andrew:

• Turn recorded voice mail messages into text instantly so that you can receive answer phone messages discreetly in meetings
• Electronically sense when I want to get out of a date and ring with a re-recorded message from my Mum explaining that Dad had left her and I can I come to Scotland right away…
• Instantly morph into the shape of a banana the moment the traffic police pass me and I am not using my hands free
• Work on all flights without causing the plane’s equipment to supposedly malfunction leading to engine failure, a plane crash and inevitable death
• Plug into a standard international hotel TV set and find another English speaking channel other than BBC 24 and Euro Sport.

Mary:

• Would be great if you could actually use it on airplanes to text your steward/stewardess rather than pressing that embarrassing come-and-help-me-please-I’m-an-invalid button
• Do away with room keys and allow you to enter your room with special code texted to you from hotel reception.

Stevie:

Being on my 5th mobile this year I can categorically state that I would like my phone to do the following:

• Not fall out of my poacher’s pocket into the toilet prior to dog walk on Cornish beach
• Have a homing device for when it is left on the runway in torrential rain in Madrid during a mid Smith-trip plane change
• Be able to survive when it is left on the window sill in the pouring rain
• Be strong enough to cope when dropped down the toilet at Smith HQ
• Be able to bounce back when dropped in a sink full of water at Smith HQ.

Dominic:

• My ex-flatmate and I once spent an evening discussing the possible merits of a mobile phone Swiss army knife combination. It would feature a lighter and a bottle opener as well as corkscrew and that funny little saw thing you get. At the time we were quite convinced of the brilliance of our new creation and even started work on our mock pitch to Theo Paphitis. Obvious travel related additions would be a compass (GPS is for girls) and maybe a long telescopic prodder for fending off vendors peddling cheap sunglasses on the beach.

Any other suggestions out there?

This entry was posted on Tuesday, November 4th, 2008 at 2:25 pm and is filed under News. You can follow any comments on this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a comment, or trackback from your own site.