Flying app's unconventional path includes refunds, 3D-printed maps. Flying, an iPhone app that debuted this year, helps travelers manage their itineraries — a service that TripIt, TripCase, WorldMate, Google Now, and other apps also offer. To stand out from its competitors, Flying aims to have the hippest aesthetics and the cleverest add-on features. Today, for instance, it announces a refund-tracking service. It has also begun taking orders for physical, 3D-printed itineraries, which will begin to be shipped by the winter holidays. No wonder that the makers of Flying, the Hamburg startup, Seat 4a, beat out 45 competitors to win Germany’s “travel startup of the year” contest run by the country’s online travel industry. The app has drawn 17,000 users in its first year with no marketing, with about 60% in the US, 30% in Europe and 10% elsewhere.
Flying, with style The Flying app (for iPhone only) presents a traveler’s itinerary in the latest fashion for graphic design. There’s no up-front fee, so it’s “risk free.” An app that 3D prints physical souvenir maps.
Connect your travels. WorldMate. Mobile Travel App. Itinerary Manager. Flight Status. WorldMate iPad app keeps tabs on LinkedIn connections. TripIt debuts Kindle Fire apps and videoconferencing appointments. TripIt launched a couple of Kindle Fire apps and separately now can include certain videoconferencing appointments in your travel itinerary. A unit of Concur, TripIt now offers free and paid apps available on Kindle Fire and in Amazon’s Appstore for Android. The free app contains advertising and the paid app, available for $3.99 per download, offers TripIt’s itinerary management service without advertisements cluttering up the works. With tablets all the rage, TripIt’s new Kindle Fire and Android apps join earlier travel-related Android entries from Kayak, FlightTrack Pro, Yelp and others in the Amazon app store. Meanwhile, the Brussels-based Global Videoconferencing Network and TripIt have completed some integration work.
TripIt now recognizes travelers’ GVN videoconferencing appointments when they email their confirmations to TripIt. This is the first time that TripIt has recognized videoconferencing virtual-meet-ups as part of its travel-itinerary organizing. TripIt has 1 million mobile customers and hopes to get to 10 million user level. TripIt, the itinerary management service acquired by Concur in January, has reached a milestone: 1 million mobile users. Those numbers come from Concur chairman and CEO Steve Singh, who says TripIt had 2 million users when acquired and is on track to double that number to 4 million customers by the end of 2011. Singh says TripIt added 500,000 users in the first three months of 2011 and another 500,000 by the end of June, reaching the 3 million mark. Parsing the numbers, one in three TripIt users use the service at least part of the time on their mobile devices.
Singh says Concur will make a big push to get TripIt to 10 million users and once TripIt reaches that level, then the service can be “monetized in very interesting ways.” “And while the revenue contribution from TripIt remains very modest in fiscal ’11, we expect it to become a more meaningful contributor to revenue in fiscal 2013 and beyond,” Singh says. Toward that goal, TripIt is off to a pretty good start. TripIt - Travel Itinerary - Trip Planner.