Apps purporting to make travel easier are emerging all the time, but when it comes to being successful ‘utility’ and ‘relevance’ are the big buzzwords. EyeforTravel considers how two recently launched travel apps measure up.

There may well be an app for everything – apps for iOS, apps for Android, third party apps for Facebook. But in spite of the proliferation of travel apps there is, as EyeforTravel’s recently released consumer report reveals, still room for innovation. The research, involving over 8,400 travel consumers across five countries, points to a growing need for user friendly, useful and clutter free apps for mobile. Why? Because 31% of consumers surveyed in the US by TripAdvisor said they plan to use travel apps on their mobile device or smart phone. At the same time 30% of the world’s billion Facebook users are using their smart phone to update their status and communicate with ‘friends’ who are becoming an important source of travel recommendation and information.  

Enter two brand new travel apps, one for mobile the other for Facebook, but both looking to make travel better.

A city in your pocket

First in line is the travel app of Stay.com which was named one of the top 50 websites by Time magazine. The big plus here is that it works both online and offline to eliminate exorbitant data roaming charges. Users can download guides and maps for 117 cities onto their smartphones and continue to discover and add new places to their personal guide even without an Internet connection. Any addition to the personal travel guide is automatically synced once on Wi-Fi, incorporating input from multiple users – be they friends or fellow travellers.  The app is essentially a ‘city in your pocket’ that is lighter on the pocket and lighter than a guidebook.

Stay.com’s founder and CEO, Joachim Paasche says: “By providing travellers with a truly social experience, they can create a city guide that’s completely personal combining recommendations from experts and their friends.”   

When it comes to utility it seems this one ticks the boxes. It uses downloadable, vector-based map technology which takes up minimal space (less than 5MB) and lets users pan and zoom without lengthy load times. The maps are always available offline and GPS functionality allows users find their way around town and discover nearby attractions. The app also uses information from travel sources like Google Places allowing users to map millions of local venues around the world that their friends want them to visit. Content from TripAdvisor and TimeOut, among others, means information on local restaurants, hotels and entertainment venues is readily available. Of course integration with Facebook allows travellers to personalise their guides by requesting suggestions from friends, inviting fellow travellers to collaborate on their guides and accessing all Facebook friend check-ins.

Keeping tabs on travel

Speaking of check-ins this brings us to the next app; myTab’s check-in Facebook app, which tells your friends about your ‘full trip’.   Developed by myTab.co, an online gift card which allows you save and fundraise for you dream trip, it claims to do what other similar apps don’t. 

“Every other check-in app including Foursquare and Facebook Check-In focuses on the exact here and now,” says myTab.co’s Heddi Cundle. “They also seem to seem to assume you will keep them active but not everybody does. I may not check in for a day on Foursquare but have visited seven places in that time. But anyone looking at my Foursquare only sees where I was based on last check in. It’s like playing catch up before the friend vanishes and checks in elsewhere.”

myTab’s Facebook Check In App has created a visual discovery that solves this problem. “You simply enter your current start and end date and you’re done,” she says. 

The inspiration for its development came after the myTab.co team was discussing having a complimentary sideline Facebook App. “Pretty quickly we all agreed that missing status updates about friends in the same city, who we could have connected with, was a big issue,” she says.  To test the theory, Cundle delved into the past two days of friend’s status updates. She noticed that people taking a trip aren’t specific so friends are commenting with a flurry of questions, defeating the objective of Facebook’s philosophy of connecting the world. “In fact it is actually a ‘disconnect’!”

Take for example a status update from Jane who ‘Can’t wait to arrive in Spain!’ “Of course this bought a tonne of comments from friends – where in Spain, how long for, who are you going with, why are you in Spain, when are you back? Jane had to keep commenting, answering these questions,” says Cundle. “I receive at least two status updates a day from friends saying, for example, ‘Just arrived in NYC, anyone else here?’  Then there’ll be a flurry of friends commenting about who may be in Manhattan, who has just left, who is possibly arriving next week. With myTab’s Facebook Check-In App, it’s so easy to see destination, start-end date and purpose.”

So far there have been several thousand authorisations of the App mainly in the US, the UK and Italy. The app is tracking equal numbers of men and women but women aged 18 to 24 are in the majority while men tend to be between 25 and 34 years old.

As the app grows, Cundle says the plan is to offer local deals to customers during their trip. “The key to our App is that we know how long our customer is in that city for and the purpose, so only relevant local advertising offers will come to them,” she says.

More features for myTab.co are currently being developed. “We aim to integrate the gifting and saving API within other travel sites and introduce a native smart phone app that will combine the best features of myTab.co and our Facebook check-in app along with a few extra bells and whistles,” says Cundle. From here the aim is global expansion so non US customers can save and book travels on myTab. “We have a flurry of other features and opportunities up our sleeve over the next 10 years!”

Watch this space.