The future of the travel guide is mobile and user-content-driven and comes in the shape of Triposo, a mobile app that automatically generates customised travel information from user-generated content on the Internet.
This is according to Triposo co-founder, Douwe Osinga, who told delegates at the recent E-Tourism Africa Summit in Cape Town that the conventional travel guide book was fast disappearing as travellers turned to real-time, up-to-the-minute, peer-assessed information about a destination, provided at their fingertips on their mobile phones.
With no human editors involved, Triposo automatically extracts information from social media networks like Facebook, TripAdvisor, Foursquare and Wikipedia to generate user-driven, interactive content about destinations worldwide.
Osinga said the development of the mobile app was driven by the mobile revolution that has triggered behavioural changes – 85% of users would rather give up drinking water than give up their mobile phones; 49% of mobile users look up storylines online while watching television; and 79% check prices online via mobile while shopping.
In terms of travel, this means that people prepare less but depend more on their phones. He said 66% of mobile users no longer looked up a destination before they set off as they depended on mobile apps to show them the way. Travellers generally research five restaurants no less than 500m away around dinner-time. Some 40% of mobile hotel bookings are made the same day or the next day, a trend that Hoteltonight.com has based its business model on.
Osinga said Triposo tapped into these trends and allowed travellers “to wander without getting lost”. “At the same time, we don’t want you to miss out on attractions you may not know about. We wade through and filter online reviews and alert you to attractions nearby that you shouldn’t miss out on, focus on on-the-spot recommendations from other users, and allow you find what you are looking for a lot faster. We have great in-depth content, e.g. we don’t just tell you about a museum but also about the individual paintings and articles written about the period and similar artists. As you use the app over time, it becomes more geared towards your personal interests,” he explains.
Comments (0)
Comments are closed