Cruise retailer iCruise met its deadline: The company got its Cruise Finder iPad app into iTunes in time for the January to March Wave Season.
The iPad app enables you to track a ship and receive updates, and showcases itineraries, route maps, port photos and re-sizable deck plans from 30 cruise lines, along with the Revelex-powered ability to book 13 of them.
Most iPad users access the app for dreaming and planning, but still call to book, although Cruise Finder provides booking capabilities for Royal Caribbean, Celebrity, Azamara, Carnival, Norwegian Cruise Line, Disney Cruise, Holland America, Princess, Seabourn, Crystal, Cunard, MSC Cruises and Costa Cruises, says Uf Tukel, founder and co-president of parent company WMPH Vacations.
iCruise, which has no ties to Apple and its patent activities, has had iPhone and Android apps on the market for some time, but wanted to introduce an iPad app to take advantage of Wave Season's booking windfall.
"We wanted to harness as much as we could from our website and smartphone apps," Tukel says. "However, most of those images weren't optimized for iPad. As a result, we had to create over 20,000 new images that would present well on multiple platforms."
In addition, iCruise coders had a complex task in adequately rendering deck plans given the iPad's "pinch and zoom functionality," Tukel adds.
In addition to free iPhone, iPad and Android apps, iCruise.com has a mobile website.
And, a Kindle Fire version of Cruise Finder is in the works and slated for introduction by the end of the first quarter.
However, by that time Wave Season will have just about sailed.