How is Augmented Reality App Development Shaping the Travel Industry?
Have you tried decorating your home using the IKEA app, or used Snapchat filters, or played Pokemon Go? If yes, then you are familiar with Augmented Reality technology. This amazing technology is revolutionizing every industry and the travel industry is not an exception. Augmented Reality app development is highly beneficial for businesses and marketers who are looking to enrich their customer experiences. AR-based travel apps help them to transform the way customers see their surroundings. These apps are highly interactive and render an immersive user experience which increases customer engagement. In this article, we will discuss how Augmented Reality app development is transforming the travel industry.
As per the latest 2021 report, it is expected that there will be 1.96 billion mobile AR users across the globe. This number is expected to increase to 2.4 billion mobile AR users by 2023. So, a mobile app development company needs to start integrating AR technology into travel app solutions to give a competitive edge to the travel and hospitality businesses.
Scope of Augmented Reality Travel Apps
The tour and travel industry encompasses several aspects such as transportation, accommodation, hospitality, tourist spots, local transit, etc. While AR technology is new for the mobile app development domain, its role in tour and travel apps is growing constantly.
The future of AR technology in the travel industry looks bright and it has the potential to transform each aspect of the industry. So, a mobile app development company should start focusing on this emerging technology to build immersive travel app solutions. Here are some of the applications of augmented reality app development.
Accommodation and Hotels
Augmented reality enables hotel and accommodation businesses to offer an engaging and immersive customer experience. It allows them to provide information to customers with 360-degree visual tours and displays of 3D views.
Providing information in a highly interactive way increases the demand for hotel bookings as potential trust and feel confident about the property.
Hotel businesses can even improve their services by allowing guests to use AR-enabled mobile apps to explore and navigate the property and use the amenities provided to them.
They can also enhance the physical surroundings using interactive hotel elements like interactive wall maps that can encourage customers to visit local tourist destinations.
Augmented Tourist Spots
A travel app development company can use augmented reality technology to build apps that offer interactive tours of famous tourist destinations and landmarks. With AR travel apps, travelers can gain access to augmented tours of historical places, buildings, and landmarks, and know about them.
AR-based travel apps can even allow a user to point their smartphone at a restaurant and receive menus and reviews instantly. Augmented travel destinations can help tourists to gain information on the go about things of their interests.
Immersive Navigation
With AR-based travel apps, tourists can never get lost in a foreign country or a remote area irrespective of the language barriers. Travelers can use AR navigation apps to reach their desired destinations easily. With features like arrows and pointers, these apps provide easy instructions that travelers can follow. Also, AR apps combine the device camera with Google Maps to offer immersive navigation and enhance user experience.
Local Transit
AR plays a significant role in improving local transit. AR-based travel apps come with features like interactive map views of roads, destinations, traffic, and the best travel places in the city. They can not only use these apps while traveling by cabs but also when traveling by public transportation. AR apps are nothing less than tourist guides that provide information that a traveler needs when traveling.
Beacon Technology & Push Notifications
Another implication of augmented reality includes the application of beacons that work through Bluetooth. Beacon technology is useful in the travel and tourism industry as it enables businesses and marketers to send push notifications or enable certain functions when tourists enter a specific place.
Hotel businesses can use beacons to help customers to unlock their hotel rooms when they are nearby the hotel. It can be also used to send menus, user maps, reviews, special offers or discount vouchers, etc.
You can hire mobile app developers and they will help you integrate this powerful technology to build an effective travel app solution.
Augmented Reality Gamification
Augmented reality app development allows hotel business to enhance their customer experiences by including fun elements into their physical surroundings.
For example, Best Western employs AR to enable children to see Disney characters on their premises. Adults can use AR apps to customize and redecorate rooms according to their preferences.
AR Breaks Down Language Barriers
A travel app development company can use AR technology to scale up the travel experience. With AR technology, users can utilize smartphones to translate different foreign languages. AR apps translate objects and text with the help of augmented reality and render an engaging and immersive user experience to travelers from all over the world.
So, if you want to offer a more engaging, personalized, and immersive user experience to global travelers, you can hire mobile app developers to build AR-powered travel applications.
Advantages of Augmented Reality App Development
AR travel apps have become the best allies of travelers worldwide by solving various pain points and helping businesses to improve their services and offer personalized experiences to their customers. So, if you’re planning to invest in a travel app development company, make sure you integrate the power of AR technology into your travel apps.
Some of the advantages of augmented reality app development include:
Easy and Instant Access to Information
AR-based travel apps can help you choose your preferred destinations and experiences in a more enriching way. Augmented reality can be accessed through mobile devices which makes access to information easy and portable. You can access information and reviews of neighboring locations, find Wi-Fi hotspots and check weather forecasts in real-time.
Improved Advertising and Marketing
AR-powered advertising and marketing can facilitate tourists’ decisions as they can visualize properties and services interactively. Augmented Reality enables travel companies to offer distinctive and imaginative narratives through virtual tours which create lifelike user experiences. Besides impacting booking decisions, AR-focused marketing strategies increase trust and turn first-time guests into loyal customers.
Convenience and Comfort
Real-time access to information enhances the experiences of tourists and this is possible through mobile apps. AR-based travel apps can help visitors to navigate easily through arrows or pointers into a new city. An AR travel app serves as a tourist guide and helps eliminate language barriers for foreign customers.
It improves traveler’s convenience and comfort in terms of booking tickets, finding the best places for eating and drinking, shopping, and exploring famous tourist spots.
Enhanced Tourist Destinations
AR technology enables a travel app development company to include 3D models of destinations and landmarks of historical significance. Travelers can enjoy a more immersive experience and travel through time. Augmented reality is making zoos and theme parks more attractive and appealing to tourists. By blending art and science with culture and architecture, AR technology can enhance tourist destinations like never before.
Wrapping Up
Augmented Reality plays a significant role in transforming the travel industry. It brings numerous opportunities for businesses to enhance their travel experience. AR has the potential to expand the customer base of hotels, local restaurants, booking services, and other stakeholders in the travel industry. We hope that this article has helped you understand the importance of the augmented reality app development.
As a specialized travel app development company, we suggest integrating the power of AR in your travel mobile applications to take your business to a whole new level. Besides being well-versed with AR technology, we have vast domain expertise in the travel and tourism industry and can build custom travel app solutions for your business.
Hire iOS app developers from us to turn your travel app idea into reality.
FAQs
Q.1. What types of AR-based travel apps can you build?
- As an experienced mobile app development company, we hold extensive expertise in building all types of AR travel applications including:
- Location-based travel apps
- Marker-based travel apps
- Simultaneous Localization and Mapping (SLAM) software, etc.
Q.2. What is the cost of building an AR-based app?
The cost of augmented reality-based apps ranges from $5,000 to $300,000, or more depending on various factors. AR technology is the latest trend that a mobile app development company should incorporate to build a next-gen mobile app.
Q.3. Who will own the source code of the AR-based application?
We hand over the complete ownership of the source code to our clients after the project completion.