Sunday, October 19, 2014

Travel Pro - Business Idea

Travel Pro is a smartphone application available on iOS devices that allows users to see nearby restaurants, entertainment, museums, and landmarks in the area.

The primary audience would be tourists who don’t know of all the various attractions in their destination. The app could also be useful to residents of areas that want to find something new. The app will be free because I imagine that users would probably download this on a whim to see if it could help them. If there was a price attached, then they would be less likely to give it a shot. Advertisements would probably be my main source of income (as well as a $1.99 in app purchase that removes ads). Another source of income would be working with business to feature them in the app. For a small fee the companies could be highlighted in their various categories.


Travel Pro will allow you to publicize your experience via the app and a link to your favorite social media account. Yes, this runs the risk of people using the app to complain about their experience, but it will force us to make the app as useful as possible. People can also visit the app's website to learn more about it. Extra advertising techniques might be necessary but I would first assess the success of the first strategy after a prolonged test period. I am also unsure how difficult it is to make a free app profitable. Similar to advertising, I would need to determine its financial success before changing it.

Overall, the app seems like a cool idea but after doing some research, I think that the app would be too similar to competitors to stand out. There are lots of travel smartphone apps out there and they all more or less, can achieve the features of Travel Pro.

2 comments:

  1. I love the idea of the Travel App! I think what might make this stand out are:

    - It would adapt so it would know the user's preferences; therefore, when a user visits a new city, the app might suggest the type of restaurants and entertainment areas that have been sought out in other cities.

    - Rather than thinking of ad revenue, I believe businesses would be psyched to pay a small fee to have their establishments featured in searches. It wouldn't trump the users' preferences, nor would it delete poor Yelp reviews, but it might get some traffic into their bricks-and-mortar locations.

    If you did include ads, I think people would be willing to pay $29.99 for the ad-free version; I would!

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  2. Travel Apps are very popular - I like some of Dana's recommendations to differentiate yourself from similar apps.

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