Travel Industry is no more about the visits to a travel agent seeking help in finding the best hotel and flight combination, nor is it about sending postcards back home with 50 words message telling how beautiful the place is.
With the advent of apps – social and flight/hotel booking – the travel industry has seen an evident shift. There are a number of apps today that has brought everything related to travel – accommodation, activities, and travel expense management on users’ fingertips. And only continue to do so.
In this article, we will look into the ways mobile apps are impacting tour and travel market.
But before we delve in further, let us look at some statistics that prove technology and travel are here to stay and rule in union.
- Tourism and Travel is the 7th most downloaded app category with over 85% of the global mobile users having it in their devices for planning their trips.
- 46% mobile users check-in and post photos/ videos while on holiday through their smartphones.
- 30% users find hotel deals using mobile apps
- 29% find and book flights using mobile apps
- 55% users check weather using their apps
- 49% app users find location from point A to point B using app’s map features
- 62% Travelers use apps to find restaurants
- 36% users take help of their mobile apps for finding shopping places
These statistics and figures are a clear sign of how Travel App Development has found its place in the portfolio of a number of mobile app development agencies, worldwide.
And this trend is not new. There are already a number of travel and tourism based apps in the industry, which aims at making it easier for the users to reserve and manage hotel and flight bookings, make it easy for travellers to book commutation and seats in local pubs and restaurants.
While there is already a lot a traveller can do from his/her mobile app to make the trip convenient, question is what next?
What we would be seeing in this article is the next wave of technological advancements that are going the travel and tourism industry, those that would change how users interact with their devices when on a trip.
What Does the Next Gen of Travel Mobile Apps Look Like
1- Live Movement Tracking
Real time tracking of vehicle movement, both when it is about to reach the traveller’s hotel and when in route, is soon becoming a prime function of travel based mobile app. Mixed with AI, businesses are now investing in mobile apps that can inform the travellers the history of street or a building that they cross on-route.
A number of public tour and travel agencies are now fitting in GPS Devices in their vehicles to enable live tracking system for the ease of both their drivers and the travelers.
2- Digital Money
The world has officially moved on from fiat money to digital money and it is something that businesses are cashing on to a great extent.
Brands like PayPal and Venmo have expanded their roots across geographical borders, making it easy for people to transact without having the need to carry money or get their currencies transferred in other denomination.
To aid this digital money wave, banks are also now offering credit and debit cards that come with the facility of making international payment at very low currency exchange charges.
3- Customized Travel Apps
Businesses are now continuously finding ways to combine AI with travel mobile apps to take personalization to the next level.
Using the disruptive technology, mobile app developers would be able to give the users hotel and places to visit options that are based on their preferences which they have not even entered in the app.
With the help of Artificial Intelligence, businesses will know of the travelers’ budget, the places in their bucket list, weather they like to travel in and even the hotel they dream of staying in. Using information like these, businesses are able to offer a service that is seemingly made for the individual traveler.
4- Localized Tourism
More and more businesses are now coming with localization based mobile apps to curb the difference between the geographical boundaries, language, and culture. There are a number of apps that are coming up to help people translate their query or ask directions into a mobile app that then translates it into the place’s native language.
One other way of making your app a localized app is by giving out information specific to places that the traveler visits. You can take it to the next level by having a database of different cities, each with set of information related to the city specific restaurants, hotels, and thing to dos.
While there are a number of other roles that the next gen travel and tourism app would play in the life of the travelers backed by technologies like Beacon, AI, and AR/VR, these are the ones you should incorporate in you mobile app sonner, to join the league of next gen travel apps.
