What makes a good travel app?
Thinking about my travel app, I want to think of the aspects that makes great apps, great.
I began to sit and do some research, I downloaded a few apps and wanted to experiment with my own apps. Firstly, the main thing I want to focus on in my app is ‘communication’, this is such an important factor when it comes to a travel app, this can includes times for flights, hotel check in times, airport distances, city centre distances, hidden fee’s and other factors such as bed and breakfast. The communication is definitely a massive key in a travel app, when doing my research I found a specific area oth hidden fee’s and I wanted to think about how I can avoid hidden fees in my app, if it was a real thing. Whilst doing this, I found out hidden fees can come out from all different things such as: travel bag luggage, WIFI, parking and tourist taxes. I will consider this when planning my app, will I want an app that will include these factors? How can I make this app as simple as possible? This again, ties with communication and will all have a factor contributing to the overall quality of the app.
The next thing I discovered from my research was minimalism, I personally agree with this using travel apps in the past getting to the point is definitely one of the most important factors of a travel app, I used some travel apps such as Trivago and booking.com and they both made my user experience very minimal, for example an option of ‘where from’ and ‘where to’ which made the overall experience very pleasant. In terms of this, I will consider this when planning my own travel app as I will want the user experience to be simple but effective. This may include having a good quality search engine this may include: visible search bar, search results in an appealing format, ensuring the results are accurate and finally giving lots of options. I personally found this good with booking.com as I am immediately introduced to a search bar that allows me to decide where I want to go , where from and what dates I would like to leave.

As you can see from the screenshot I took from my app, the main page is very minimal below is places I have already booked, and I have the option to decide if I want to book somewhere else, I also like the friendly introduction to the app ‘welcome back, Rachel’ this give a warm welcoming feel to the app which again, is something I’d want to consider for my own personal app.