Articles tagged “apps”

Gogobot likely paid some big bucks for the Trip.com domain, and it is making strides with a high-quality recommendation app. Still, everyone in the travel space, especially startups, is feeling like they are running uphill as Google tosses boulders downward. Slow, steady steps may win the day.

With Lola's acquisition of Room 77's metasearch tech, Room 77 essentially becomes a consumer insights and hotel search test lab for Lola. Room 77's original founders have essentially exited the business: Google licensed its tech and hired the bulk of its employees, Expedia acquired Room 77's pioneering room-view tech, TrustYou bought Room 77's Checkmate hotel-messaging app, and now Lola picked up the remaining technology.

Google is using its Google Flights capability to power its new Artificial Intelligence-filled Assistant to respond intelligently to queries about travel. The service's inability to respond to queries about your existing travel itineraries, however, is a huge missed opportunity for now.

Another app-based start-up has failed to live up to the hype. And we're still waiting for a company in the tours and activities field to translate marketing buzz into a scalable and profitable business.

Google already had Google Maps when it added Google Flights in 2011 and later hotel metasearch and booking. With the launches of a destinations app, which pairs flight and hotel bookings, in 2015, and now the Google Trips app for organizing reservations and making tours and activities recommendations, Google's travel business is slowly, if steadily, becoming pervasive. Google can afford to bide its time -- it is, after all, Google.

Although Visit Orlando's new AI-powered travel app still has kinks, it shows the power of machine learning to provide more contextual and customized information to travelers — most of the time.

Travel managers seem to know that they need to get a better handle on mobile use — the question is how travelers will respond to clear-cut recommendations.

The holy grail for a travel manager would be an all-in-one app that travelers would actually want to use while staying within company policy — and on the radar in case of emergency. Goals are good.

Chat-based apps that use real travel agents are getting a lot of buzz; we're interested to see how they will fit into the corporate travel space.

We haven't always been enthusiastic about travel apps. These five, though, have something that most others can learn from.