The Utility Of Mobile Apps In Travel

By Author: Yancy Marry
Total Articles: 185
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The use of mobile applications is widespread. No longer is the software tool considered a luxury of only a few sectors of the economy. The travel industry is one among the most benefitted sectors from the deployment of mobile apps. Contrary to the belief that travelers do not want to stay connected with friends, family, or colleagues back home when they are on a trip, most people travelling today use the services of the popular social networking sites to update their current positions and check-in to sites. Therefore, enhanced mobile app performance is required for deployment of these software tools in the travel industry.

A poll result concluded toward the end of 2012 says that it is the business travelers who seek to remain connected 24X7 with their customers while travelling. In fact, as customers are increasingly showing the need to remain better connected while travelling, the current mobile application development industry must concentrate more on the creation of travel apps. Some important findings of this poll help to bring out the utility of mobile apps in the travel industry:

1. Four out of five travelers ...
... polled said that they would like to use mobile apps that recommended bars and restaurants around the place where they are putting up at.

2. Two thirds of the travelers polled said that mobile apps should be able to point out successfully every destination for recreational activities in the vicinity of where they were putting up.

3. One out of every five travelers demanded concierge services by running travel apps on their mobile devices. These services include ability to adjust the room temperature, call for room service, etc. However, the demand for travel applications providing concierge services has limited appeal when compared to other features.

4. More than 90 percent of the mobile audience worldwide wants a travel app that will provide functions such as booking of rail and flight tickets, finding hotels according to tariff range, and making hotel reservations following a simple and quick process.

5. Some travel apps are targeted towards a niche target audience. For instance, there are mobile applications which perform the role of airport guides by providing direction on the exact route to take for reaching from an airport to the city via short and easy routes. These travel apps generally contain information of airport to city routes across the world.

6. The demand for travel apps providing information on public transport systems at a tourist destination was also high among the travelers polled. Travelling would indeed become hassle free if people could derive information on the bus, waterways, and metro or subway routes in and around a city. However, developers must remember to update these types of travel apps regularly as change in local public transportation is rampant all over the world.

The use and popularity of travel mobile applications is well known. In a competitive market of today’s, travelers generally switch over from one travel app to another in case of poor performance. Research has also concluded that various travel companies’ websites are an alternative to searching information related to travel if mobile applications fail to provide adequate information to the traveler. This is the reason why more than 30 percent travel companies today have introduced their own apps through which travelers can receive travel data in the form of SMS’ or other alerts on their mobile devices.

Copper Mobile, an India based app developers provides enterprise application solutions to various industry verticals. The mobility consulting firms has team of iPad developers has created over 300 applications on major mobile platforms.