Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau partners with on-line coupon company Trippons.com. Join us for a community meeting at the Salida SteamPlant Event Center, Tuesday June 7, 2010 at 8:30 am
Buena Vista, CO–If you have a mobile Smartphone, you have a virtual coupon book in your pocket. A new company is partnering with the Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau and local businesses to provide savings using that Smartphone. Trippons.com has launched a new mobile website in Buena Vista and a half dozen other nationally known resort towns across the country. The idea is to offer an easy-to-use discount site on your phone in partnership with local restaurants and shops. It targets smaller communities where locals and visitors are tech savvy and looking for a deal.
Smartphones are one of the fastest growing elements of the high tech revolution and are actually replacing personal computers as the first choice among families. Trippons.com is tapping into the Smartphone market and partnering with local businesses to help market their establishments.
“If you walk down the street of any resort town, I guarantee you will see people of all ages engaged with their iPhone or Android,” stated Trippons.com president Kent Myers. “Our goal is to tap into that technology to market local businesses and provide a savings for people living and visiting resort communities.”
Trippons.com was developed by a group of local businesspeople that have lived and worked in Colorado resort towns. “We knew to be successful the idea had to be simple for both the business and the consumer and we think we have accomplished that,” said Myers. Myers is a former Senior VP of Vail Resorts. “We don’t want to make a business give away their product like Groupon, but we want them to have a conduit into the latest technology to market their business. Trippons.com uniquely provides that opportunity.”
A consumer simply has to go to the mobile website on their Smartphone and select the coupon for a local business. They flash the coupon at the business, hit the redeem button and obtain their savings. With a good offer, it brings new people into a business and saves them money.
“The Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau is happy to partner with Trippons.com to add an additional marketing channel to our member businesses to reach destination guests. We’re coming into the busy summer season and we are excited to help provide a cost-effective, high impact way to help our member businesses succeed in standing out from the crowd” said April Prout-Ralph, Marketing Director of the Chafee County Visitor’s Bureau.
The concept was tested in Crested Butte, Colorado last winter and it was found that residents as well as visitors took advantage of the concept.
The Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau will be hosting a general meeting and information session about the Trippons.com, in Salida, Tuesday,June 7, 2011 from 8:30am to 10:00am at the Salida SteamPlant Event Center, Sackett and G Street, downtown Salida. (coffee and goodies will be served too!) If your business is interested in becoming a member of trippons.com and/or joining us on Thursday evening, contact April at 719-221-2391, april@nowthisiscolorado.com or go to the trippons.com website. Customers should look for the unique window signs displayed in participating businesses or just go to the mobile site on your phone at www.trippons.com.
April Prout-Ralph, Marketing Director
Chaffee County Visitor’s Bureau
april@NowThisIsColorado.com
719-221-2391
FAST FACTS ABOUT SMARTPHONES:
95 million Smartphones will be sold in 2011 in The United States. According to the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 83 percent of people own cell phones or Smartphones and 35 percent of people have gone on the Internet with their phones. More do so every day. Nielson reports that 31% of U.S. mobile phone owners have a Smartphone as of December 2010, and expects Smartphone ownership to exceed 50% by the end of this year.
Recent updates on the Smartphone sales charts estimate that 491.9 million units will be sold worldwide by 2012, compared to 2008 sales of 139.3 million. The Personal Computer market is expected to expand to about 443.1 million units from 290.8 million in the same time frame. “Cell phones have evolved tremendously over the past decade, more precisely since 2007. They no longer serve the sole purpose of basic communication… they have evolved to Smartphone… and they have a plan,” comments Mathew Collier of www.rothmanresearch.com.
The worldwide mobile phone market grew 19.8% year over year in the first quarter of 2011 (1Q11) fueled by high smartphone growth, especially in emerging markets, and gains made by market challengers. According to the International Data Corporation (IDC) Worldwide Mobile Phone Tracker, vendors shipped 371.8 million units in 1Q11 compared to 310.5 million units in the first quarter of 2010. IDC expects almost all of the worldwide mobile phone market’s growth to be driven by smartphones throughout the forecast, which goes to 2015.
The iPhone, Blackberry, Droid and Smartphones in general dominate the buzz in the mobile market, but only 21% of American wireless subscribers are using a Smartphone as of the fourth quarter 2009 compared to 19% in Q3 2009 and 14% at the end of 2008. We are just at the beginning of a new wireless era where Smartphones will become the standard device consumers will use to connect to friends, the internet and the world at large.
The share of Smartphones as a proportion of overall device sales has increased to 29% for phone purchasers in the last six months and 45% of respondents to a Nielsen survey indicated that their next device would be a Smartphone. If we combine these intentional data points with falling prices and increasing capabilities of these devices along with an explosion of applications for devices, we are seeing the beginning of a groundswell. This increase will be so rapid, that by the end of 2011, Nielsen expects more Smartphones in the U.S. market than feature phones.
In the U.S., people are just waking up to the possibilities presented by having the Internet in your pocket. Credit Apple and the iPhone for the surge in interest on the part of Americans, said Jonathan Goldberg, senior analyst with Deustche Bank. Three things in particular are driving Smartphone growth and interest among regular people: the increasing amount of time they spend online on things like social-networking sites, the impatience of having to wait until they get back to their home or coffee shop to get online to check messages or update their status, and the desire to look good while doing all that, he said.
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