For a travel/destination app to be successful, it should be client-centric, have intelligent booking feature, promotes cashless travel, and offer a direct channel of communication like instant messaging. The destination mobile apps should provide offline content, location-based data, calendar, currency converter, and maps, among other things.
Insights into the Popularity of Destination/Tourism Mobile Apps
- The destination/tourism mobile apps have revolutionized the travel and tourism Around 80% of travellers use mobile applications to plan for holiday trips.
- About 60% of smartphone users prefer using destination apps to plan their tours, according to eMarketer.
- According to Adweek, around 80% of destination mobile app users prefer getting information from the recent reviews on the app than making a call to inquire about services or the destination.
- According to research, 82% of travellers keep downloading destination/tourism apps because of the handy smartphone functionality, the provision of offline content, and the app’s speed as compared to using browsers and desktops.
- Destination mobile app users prefer applications that offer a good UX (User Experience), and 69% of the users are likely to delete the app if it has a bad UX.
- Destination mobile app users prefer a multi-functional app (that has all the necessary services) than a single-purpose app, according to a survey conducted by Moritz Christian.
- Around 2% of travellers use the travel guide feature in a destination/tourism mobile app, 72.2% use offline maps, 41.1% use public transportation navigation, 12.6% use taxi booking feature, and 44.7% would prefer an app having a tickets-booking feature.
- About 40% of destination/tourism mobile app users use the voice-search feature in the app at least once per day.
- According to a survey conducted in 2018, 84% of travel brands were planning to increase their investment in destination mobile apps, while 53% considered it important to interact their users via mobile before, during and after their trips.
- The global online travel market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 11% between 2018 and 2026.
Popular Destination/Tourism Mobile Apps
- Expedia
- The Expedia mobile app utilizes location-based technology and time zone updates to provide users with relevant itinerary and vital data like airport maps, confirmation codes, flight status, and addresses.
- Expedia has a 8/5 rating on the App Store and is available in more than 15 languages. The destination mobile app has over 10 million downloads.
Expedia Features
- Expedia’s itinerary feature gives users free flights status updates and access to the company’s customer service. Travellers can share their itinerary via email and messaging with family and friends. Through the Expedia app, the users can access confirmation codes, airlines, travel dates, flight numbers, flight status, and gate information.
- Expedia allows for its users to browse flight maps, showing location pins for arrival and departure and notifies them of potential layovers. Expedia has airport terminal maps of over 200 main airports globally.
- Expedia users can access hotel addresses, maps, and contact information through the hotels feature on the app.
- The car rental feature gives the users information about the car rental company, confirmation codes, local phone numbers, and the pick-up and drop-off dates and time.
- The cruise feature on Expedia app allows users to know when the ship starts to sail.
- Expedia has a destination service feature which displays the valid dates for every activity, when they start and when the activity expires.
- The app provides a mobile booking service for flights.
- mTrip
- mTrip has over 3 million downloads and is available for both Android and iOS users in the Google Play Store and App Store, respectively. The mobile application has gained theloyalty and trust of CVB (Convention and Visitor Bureau) Tourism Boards, and the DMO (Destination Marketing Organization), establishing itself as a leader in the tourism industry.
- Users have access to a detailed travel directory, offline maps, and daily itinerary.
- All the features on mTrip, except for updates and sharing, can be accessed offline at zero roaming charges.
mTrip Features
- mTrip has a destination guide, which has the capability to add single or multiple destinations, unlimited editorial content, directories of the destinations with pictures, prices, opening hours, booking links, contact information, events and calendars, and traveller ratings.
- mTrip has detailed offline maps and location-based navigation to be used either by public transportation or foot. The application has a search feature to search for streets and places and shows the time and distance between the users current location and the destination.
- mTrip has international coverage and is translated in 14 different languages on both Android and iPhone.
- mTrip uses augmented reality, has a currency converter, postcards, shows nearby places, and comes with a trip journal.
- mTrip provides suggested tours as recommended by the tourism board or DMO.
- The app automatically generates a user’s customized daily itineraries depending on the user’s preferences.
- com
- com mobile app is available in more than 41 languages.
- com was ranked 5th in the Google Play Store, according to a report from Sensor Tower, and has over 20 million downloads.
Booking.com Features
- com has a search feature that enables its users to quickly filter through hotels, motels, and holiday homes. The application also has advanced filters which include price filters, number of people, budget, types of rooms, and check-in/check-out dates.
- com mobile app has push notifications enabled and mobile in-payment capabilities that enable users to pay through debit/credit card, e-wallets, net banking, and PayPal.
- com has multi-lingual support feature which enables a user to translate the app to a language they are comfortable using, calendars and do not charge the credit card or booking fees.
- com has global currency support making it convenient to be used worldwide.