SWEDEN - A recent study by Marketing Charts shows that "44% of travellers use their smartphone to research travel while they're traveling". Furthermore, "80% would like to see mobile applications offering suggested restaurants and bars around the hotel location" (survey by Hotelmarketing.com).

ArrivalGuides CEO Magnus Aideborn points out that "If a travel operator can help their customers during the trip this will build brand and customer loyalty, but can also generate significant ancillary revenue through in destination purchases of e.g. tours & activities". A study commissioned by Expedia on consumer behavior on mobile devices states that "40% of travellers rely on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) for destination ideas", which further strengthens the case for including destination information for offline use in mobile solutions offered by the OTAs.

The brand new white-label apps are developed in close co-operation with current travel operators partners to offer the ArrivalGuides content on mobile platforms. ArrivalGuides has a unique system for sourcing professional, always up-to-date local destination recommendations by giving access to the official tourist bureau partners to frequently update content directly in the ArrivalGuides CMS. The focus is to deliver the best B2B destination information solutions covering the whole travel cycle and over 170 travel operators globally already use the solutions for online, email and Facebook.

The director of distribution client solutions at ArrivalGuides Ola Zetterlof says "A lot of travel operators are struggling with their mobile strategy. Whether to focus on mobile (or responsive web) or an app or both. Developing and maintaining a range of apps is time consuming and can be very costly. Most OTA apps focus on booking functionality, but a lot of research shows that conversion rates on mobile web and in apps are not as great as the usage and even more so when looking at actual transactions form the mobile. Most people still go to their desktop for booking."

Apart from featuring the travel operators brand and vast amounts of always up-to-date recommendations for each destination, offline usage, and great maps, the iOS and Android app is available in several languages: English, German, French, Spanish, Italian, simplified Chinese, Arabic, Japanese, Russian, Swedish, Norwegian, Danish and Finnish. It also incorporates the travel operators own booking solutions:

"A white-label app is an easy and cost efficient option for travel operators to offer their customers a planning and booking tool and a great value-add for their trip", Ola Zetterlof sums up.