Image Credit : Hotels 4D 2014
Project Overview
A top app in its category, Hotels 4D has a fresh and simple approach to hotel discovery. The focus is finding the right hotel at the location most convenient for you. The magic happens on an interactive map through quick search and live results filtering. Available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and web, Hotels 4D offers a hotel database of over 850,000 hotels worldwide and a number of deals for any given location. Our goal is to create a home for all hotels in the world!
Organisation
Team
There are currently eight people involved in the project – Windows Phone, iOS, Android and BlackBerry developers, quality assurance specialist, designer, marketing specialist and project manager.
The iOS (Tihomira Slavova), Android (Miroslav Sokolovski) and Windows Phone (Lachezara Petkova) developers, are currently working on new features such as integrating data on hotel availability and number of guests as well as a gamification layer.
The marketing team, Vasil Dimov (also PM of the project) and Milena Samardzhieva, are raising awareness of the product mainly through the social media channels. Currently the team is preparing for the release of the next major update in the following months. They are also in intense communication with worldwide travel agencies and tour operators, expanding the network of partners and attracting new users to the platform.
Project Brief
Finding the right hotel at the right location from over 850,000 has never been this simple!
Hotels 4D simplifies hotel discovery through the use of an interactive map with live results filtering. See the difference from traditional search, find the best deal for you and your family and you’ll never go back. Available for Android, iOS, Windows Phone, BlackBerry and web, the app’s main advantage is that it puts emphasis on location making it fast and easy to discover the exact hotel you need through your phone or your browser. Main features include:
* Database of over 850,000 hotels worldwide
* Deals and promotions based on location or interest
* Hotel summary – price rates, photos, facilities, directions and more
* Results displayed on a map or a list
* Personal accounts & social media integration
* Community info – recent ratings, reviews, photos and comments from users
* City descriptions and helpful travel tips
* Driving or walking directions
The app has been ranked #1 free Travel App for Windows Phone (Travel & Navigation – Hotels) in markets such as Russia, Spain, Italy and Portugal. It consistently holds a Top 3 position the United States, Germany and Singapore.
Project Need
The Hotels 4D platform, encompassing a website and four mobile applications (for iOS, Android, Windows Phone and BlackBerry), is innovative in its approach to speeding up search in three key areas. These include clustering, a fast performance-optimized search by city, address and hotel name and a fresh, intuitive UI. The application also offers deals and promotions, city descriptions, travel tips and reviews for the most popular travel destinations written by the team.
One of the main advantages of Hotels 4D is that it provides the user with all the necessary feedback to quickly find the right hotel directly onto the interactive map in seconds. The search results can be instantly viewed on the map grouped in clusters, saving precious display real estate, or in a list sorted by key criteria (price and star rating).
Upcoming features include hotel availability, number of guests and a gamification layer.
The website and mobile applications are available in Bulgarian, English, French, Italian, Spanish, German, Portuguese and Russian.
User Experience
The performance of Hotels 4D is fast and smooth: price and star rating filters display results in seconds.
The interface is designed to be functional and engaging at the same time. The key information is displayed right on the map, making it easy for the user to manage choices without entering second-level screens. The clusters on the map are color-coded and show the number of hotels in a chosen region filtered by user-selected criteria.
The deals based on location or search query offer discounts for thousands of hotels worldwide. Multiple providers support allows easy price comparison between some of the biggest booking providers. The city descriptions, travel tips and reviews make the app a convenient all-in-one companion not just to plan your stay but also to explore new locations.
Project Marketing
Our strategy with Hotels 4D has been to promote the app as a handy traveler tool for every mobile or web-enabled device. This is why the app is offered entirely free, no hidden costs, and is available for all major mobile platforms, plus web. Removing a user’s platform from the barriers to use helps the app spread more easily through word-of-mouth. Beyond enticing pricing and channel distribution, Hotels 4D is supported by an active community of beta testers, who, even though working behind the curtains, help the app spread around the world, serving as evangelists of sorts.
At the moment, we are preparing all marketing materials for the next update of the application, coming in the next few months. Our marketing efforts will focus on active promotion of the added gamification layer and on communication with media partners and travel agencies. We have found that the app cannot last without an active user community, so we will try to extend much further the app’s reach via social media campaigns and by engaging current and prospective users to generate more content (add hotels, write reviews and travel tips, upload photos, contribute articles, etc).
Project Privacy
The communication between Hotels 4D and the backend is through SSL. The apps send each request with a unique token attached, thus guaranteeing the protection of the data being transferred. Strict permissions policies are applied in order to prevent unauthorized access to another user’s data.
Minimum sensitive data is saved on our servers and is not distributed outside of the platform. The servers meet all regulations about data preservation and protection.
Travel & Tourism
This category relates to applications dedicated to travel and tourism services and information.
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