ShopQwik

The next version of ShopQwik is out and it’s a gorgeous application.  It makes good use of mobile flash — have a look at the screenshot to the left.  Look!  Wow!

At first glance you might think, ‘er, booking travel? I’ll do that on my computer thank you very much’.  That’s a fair point.  You most probably want to sit and spend a good few hours researching far flung holiday destinations and then book them online with your favourite travel website.  Perfectly fine.

However, if you need to get to Edinburgh on Friday from Heathrow because of a business meeting, that’s a rather boring affair.  There’s little joy to be extracted from sitting on your PC clicking away. 

Enter ShopQwik.  While you are sat eating your sandwich, you can be browsing flight times and costs through a very innovative interface.  Before you finish your sandwich, your flight can be booked!   It also offers Car Hire, Resorts, Hotels and the London Congestion Charge payments.

So, taking a step back:  A few years ago, when you had to go to a travel agent to book — when the whole thing was quite complicated, I think booking travel on your mobile would have been an alien experience.  But now, when you turn up for a Ryanair flight, all you need is your passport.  You don’t even need your booking reference.  The experience of booking an Easyjet flight is painless.  Click, Click, Click… done.  So if you can transfer that to the mobile, so I can sort out my mundane flights and hotels while I’m sat on the train, excellent.

Case in point: Two weeks ago I was sat in my hotel in Cannes with a slightly pained look on my face.  I had to stay an extra day and the hotel I was staying in did not have any space.  I thus had to look around for another hotel that had space for the additional night.  I thought I’d give ShopQwik a go. 

I fired it up and within about 30 seconds, I had my hotel!  ShopQwik stores your credit card details for you so you can easily purchase without having to spend ages typing in numbers, so when you’ve found the place you want or the flight you want, you can just click ‘buy’. 

I was just about to book when the phone rang.  The office had sorted out a hotel for me.  I was a bit deflated as a result — I was looking forward to doing it through ShopQwik!  😉 

The latest version of the service released today also includes Congestion Charge payment.  I think this is a total god-send.  Absolutely super.  I am going to give it a go later on today.  I use the Congestion Charge now and again.  When I was a regular user, I had it all setup so that I could text in and the CCLondon.com service would bill me.  However, since I’m no longer a regular user, I always do it manually… and quite a few times I’ve forgotten to do it before 10pm.  Total arse.   So I am delighted at the possibilities with the ShopQwik congestion charge system. 

Check it out: http://www.shopqwik.com.  You should have it on your phone within about 60 seconds of visiting the site.