Amadeus recently partnered with VisitEurope to move forward on its vision for Destination Europe 2020, an initiative the organization is pushing to grow the inbound business of member countries.
The partnership is beginning to bear fruit, with the VisitEurope app released into the digital wilds this month.
The app is attractive and visually rich, providing robust functionality that both allows users to log in and save trip specifics as they browse the app and to actually convert with a plane ticket purchase to said destinations.
In the release announcement, Amadeus, which developed the app in partnership with the European Travel Commission, says the app
aims to not only inspire travellers but also helps them plan their trip from start to finish. This comprehensive, one-stop travel application starts by providing travellers with inspirational photography of Europe’s most beautiful destinations – from the Balos Chania in Greece to the pristine nature of Lapland, Finland – then gives them options to set in motion a travel plan via a detailed map with pins of European destinations, down to the effective booking on a merchant partner website.
Social is woven into the experience, with a Facebook login that brings in images and travel information from users' social graphs. This means that users can easily see who among their friends have been to a particular destination. The functionality also smartly brings in any available images from a user's own network, meaning that the images move from simply stock to fully relevant to that particular person.
The app is also complemented with a high-resolution website, as captured above. The website mimics much of the app content, with weather, images and more background information available on each country.
The website and app also bring in various images from country tourism bureaus, and places the images on a map of Europe. Users can then browse the map, which populates with images in the right sidebar, and add the images to a saved favorites list. This is the way that the interface moves trip inspiration to trip planning.
One of the coolest features is the ability to calculate the price of a flight directly in the interface.
Currently optimized for the US, Canada, Chile, Brazil and Argentina, the app aims at expanding this feature soon, using Amadeus Extreme Search technology to create multiple ways to book. This promising functionality is at the nexus of conversion and inspiration. The big question remains: do consumers actually convert in these sorts of trip planning interfaces?
The iPad app is available here, and the website lives here.