The traveller’s quest to find information about top attractions, museums, events, shopping and so on while on a trip and the ubiquitous nature of a mobile device presents many opportunities for travel brands. This could explain the wave of mobile online travel guides popping up everywhere, but it’s a tough business.

The mobile travel guide market is already saturated space so how do you differentiate? Frederic de Pardieu, chief executive officer at mTrip, a publisher of interactive travel guides for smartphones and portable devices, admits that it’s not easy process. “It is difficult to generalise about the maturity level for all mobile travel guides as the landscape is very large and diverse,” he says. For de Pardieu, some applications have such advanced features and rich content that users won’t regret leaving the paper book at home. “However, there is still progress to be made in order to improve the travel experience. Particularly in being more proactive to answer user’s expectations depending on his profile (personal tastes, real-time location, etc.) and the specific highlights of a destination.”

In two years, mTrip apps for iOS and Android have been downloaded 2 million times. According to de Pardieu, on average, a user opens the app seven times a day during their trip for around three and a half minutes per session. EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta chatted to de Pardieu about which aspects of these mobile guides are clicking with users and where there is still room for improvement.

EFT: How would you rate existing mobile travel guides?

FDP: It is difficult to give a general rating with the diversity of the offerings available. There are:

-         Apps reproducing paper guidebooks,

-         Apps focusing solely on trip planning,

-         Social network focused travel apps and so on.

However, users look for ease of use and pragmatic features that makes trip planning and on-site use easy and helpful.

Mobile travel guides will probably improve in the future with features combining complex algorithms and additional metadata associated to content to better tailor to travellers and enhance their experience.

EFT: In what way can rich content, geo-location, social networks and features like ‘augmented reality’ lend a new dimension to trip planning?

FDP: The combination of rich content, geo-location and social networks can produce a good amount of quality metadata about the destination and the points of interest, which, in turn allow the app to suggest a tailor-made trip.

EFT: How do you cater to the real-time requirements of travellers?  

FDP: From what we understand from our users, they want quick and clear real-time answers in terms of guidance. They don’t want to spend their entire trip looking down at their smartphone. Getting quick suggestions on what to do, where to eat, etc, having a clear overview of their surroundings and getting clear and simple offline directions to get from place to place is what our users enjoy with mTrip guides.

EFT: What would you say is the key to sustaining interest in a mobile travel guide and how can you avoid abandonment?

FDP: Users often download several apps for a destination they plan to visit. Apps relying too much on design and cool features, sometimes forget the fundamental needs of the average traveller.

To avoid abandonment and to be ‘THE app’ users will use till the end of their trip, the key is:

·         ease of use

·         rich content

·         clever features

·         to answer their various needs and wishes

EFT: In what way could have mobile sites and apps improved the travel planning process?

FDP: In the past, traveling with a paper guidebook meant spending 45 minutes every morning reading through what to see, in which order and how to get to the next place to visit with the fear of missing a major landmark.

Some apps have really brought an added value in terms of trip planning and visiting a destination with tailored suggestions, automatically generated itineraries and other features that does part of the job for you.

EFT: How do you see mobile travel guides evolving and how can brands make money?

FDP: Today, the mobile travel guide market is saturated with very different types of apps. The free apps segment has exploded and the challenge for publishers is to generate revenue while sales leads opportunities are more complex and advertising is less efficient due to offline usage. The future should see a more concentrated market and new creative ways of monetisation through real-time features.