Cathay Pacific Uses iPAQs to Boost Sales
Cathay Pacific Airways will give away thousands of Compaq iPAQ Pocket PCs to its premium air passengers who buy round-trip business or first-class tickets for travel from designated cities to Hong Kong.
Cathay Pacific is hoping that the success of Compaq's handheld device will help boost sales for the airline. The iPAQ has been taking a bite out of Palm's market for several years now, offering faster and more versatile handheld devices at competitive prices. According to analysts at Gartner Research, Compaq has been overtaking Palm in the hand held arena because Palm has failed to establish itself in the enterprise market, and subsequently the iPAQ has had better success with corporations.
“We selected the Compaq iPAQ to be a part of this promotion because it's the most desirable Pocket PC on the market today,” said Tom Wright, Cathay Pacific, Americas, senior vice president. Wright also added that the increased popularity of mobile computing will attract customers to this promotion because it will give them the tools to access the Internet while traveling abroad.
The promotion, which runs September 1-November 15, extends to customers who buy premium tickets on passages between Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Toronto, Vancouver and Hong Kong. Outbound flights must occur before November 15, 2001, and return travel completed by December 15, 2001.
Cathay selected the iPAQ over similar devices because of its versatility. The iPAQ, in addition to wireless Internet access, offers the ability to create Word and Excel documents, view Power Point presentations, download music, viewing streaming data and connect to corporate networks.
According to Leigh Morrison, vice president of enterprise sales for Compaq's west region, “There is continuing growth and demand for access to custom information whenever and wherever business and leisure travelers want it, and that is exemplified in the phenomenal success of Compaq products like the iPAQ.”
