A theory is only good if it explains real life

The other day I introduced WorldMate to my Touristologists. It is a very interesting native app (everybody knows the difference between mobile web app and native app, right?) available for Android, iPhone and Blackberry which recently won the Best Mobile Travel App Award at EyeForTravel’s Social Media and Mobile Strategies for Travel 2012 conference in San Francisco.

I read about it in this article and I challenge my Touristologists to use the web 2.0 business model to classify WorldMate.

They put on the usual poker face that usually means I-don’t-know-but-let’s-pretend-I-do-otherwise-Jordi-gets- depressed! I appreciate their effort! It’s much better than the I-don’t-know-AND-I-don’t-care! At the end of the day, their attitude will be the bedrock of a successful career as a Touristologist! As Thomas Jefferson said “Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.”

I hold my position and wait for the good ones, the real Touristologists, the ones that will occupy a place in the mental warriors of Touristology that I talked about in this post. I knew that sooner or later they would begin to made questions, comments, and good opinions.

But… First things first… a little bit about the story of WorldMate.

In a nutshell WorldMate native app helps their users to create their own travel itinerary. When a hotel, a car rental, airline company send an e-mail to a tourist’s Smartphone notifying about a booking, users resend this e-mail to WorldMate and thanks to XML…(what? You don’t know what XML stands for? Don’t worry you always can ask to any of my Touristologists!!!) a customized travel itinerary is created. Based upon it WorldMate can provide the right set of 3C’s (Content, Commerce and Community) in the right way.

If a tourist uses this application frequently WorldMate can create a profile that allow them to make more accurate offers when a tourist searches for a specific tourism service, or even to suggest new services.

They also provide the connections that you can find near your trip thanks to an agreement with linkedIn.

This year they add a Price Alerts service which offer alternatives to room reservations based upon the price. It’s just a matter of time that somebody (any Touristologist reading this???) creates an improved version based on add value. It will be another step along the path of showing all the relevant 3 C’s both objective and subjective.

You can learn more about WorldMate visiting their website or enjoying this funny video:

Coming back to my Touristologists’ challenge…It was a very interesting debate, indeed! Would you like to participate? What are your opinions? Are you able to provide the business model and the technological scheme?

I love Touristology’s games!