Successfully marketing a tourist destination is no easy feat. Staying profitable year-round requires a healthy booking rate – which in turn depends on your venue, marketing efforts, weather, and even the global climate.

Tourist attractions suffered another blow, with lockdowns and travel restrictions worldwide. The incertitude of the pandemic made people feel uncertain and downright scared to leave their homes.

Now, fear is no fuel for long cruises and family vacations, we all know that. People won’t visit your tourist destination unless they feel safe doing so.

This adds another challenge to the tourism industry – rebuilding a sense of safety and trust. You might be wondering how to attract tourists under these challenging circumstances. Is it even possible to rebuild the lost safety and trust?

Luckily, it is, and there’s no better way of doing so than with a custom mobile app.

A travel app for your destination is a virtual community hub that informs, entertains, and most importantly – builds trust with your audience.

Read on, and you’ll find out all about how to attract tourists and re-establish a feeling of safety with Eventya’s travel apps.

Why Choose A Mobile App to Promote Your Tourist Destination?

There is an undeniable trend when it comes to travel apps in the tourism industry. Hotels, restaurants and tourist destinations worldwide are creating their own mobile apps, and so should you.

Tourism apps make the lives of tourists and business owners much easier. These centralized apps are more interactive and engaging compared to websites and offer more versatile functions.

So how exactly would you benefit from a travel app? Let’s take a look at our top 3 benefits below.

1. Make Your Brand Visible

A custom mobile app can reinforce your brand awareness on a local and global scale. It has the potential of showcasing your logo and messages on thousands of devices.

Besides the added visibility to your attraction, travel apps make a great first impression. You’re not just giving your prospects a boring website, but an interactive and engaging community hub.

Our apps’ core features & modules are designed to captivate the users and create a sense of community. Users can share their experiences, read reviews and make travel arrangements all within the app.

Last but not least, you’ll enjoy a giant improvement in notification open rates after centralizing your brand communication.

Having a Facebook page to keep your audience updated means getting lost in hundreds of social media notifications. With a tourism app, all your push notifications will be highlighted in the newsfeed.

And your audience will get used to receiving all your updates from your app.

2. Make Trip Planning Seamless

Did you know that 42% of people have booked a hotel on their mobile device? This number increases to 53% for those under 30. Meaning that you risk losing half of your business, by not facilitating mobile booking.

People tend to organize their whole vacation via mobile. By offering a seamless booking system within your app, you’ll make their experience much easier. In turn, this will encourage them to book your venue.

Mobile booking is the most convenient type of reservation system on the market. Enable it for your destination and your booking rates will drastically improve.

3. Improve Visitor Experience

A travel app is the best tool to improve your information segmentation. You can provide everything your tourists need from maps to events and other relevant information. Not to mention you can communicate any changes with instant push notifications.

Your app can also capture those all-important user reviews. The feedback will create value for the app users and help you improve your tourist attraction.

These will add up to a stellar visitor experience, and your tourists will reward you by re-visiting your business and recommending it to new customers.

Travel App Features That Attract Tourists

Now that the benefits of travel and tourism apps are clear, let’s get down to the nitty-gritty – the must-have features of any respectable travel app.

What are the features that tourists are really looking for? Find out which of them drive more traffic to your business, below.

1. In-App Booking System

As you might have guessed, in-app booking has become essential in today’s digitalized climate. As a tourist attraction, your job is to make the reservation the easiest part, and the in-app smart booking does just that.

By making reservations seamless and accessible, your prospects will be encouraged to book your venue. And if they had a positive experience within your mobile app, they’re more likely to enjoy their stay altogether.

2. Interactive Map

Geolocation is a must when it comes to travel apps. This will help tourists navigate around your attraction like it was their hometown.

Our interactive maps come with optimized nearby search filters, making it easy to find the nearest restaurant, supermarket, or hospital.

Offering tourists a complete in-app guide to your location will make them feel catered for. Additionally, your home won’t feel as foreign to them as it normally would – increasing their confidence in booking a trip.

3. Rewards System

From Marriott to Hilton and World of Hyatt, all global leaders in the tourism industry offer loyalty programs to their customers. Why? Because they incentivize positive action and advance your customer’s relationship with your brand.

You can easily integrate a reward system into your tourism app. A small discount for every app user and some exclusive rewards for your senior users can go a long way.

For one your app users will tenfold, and your tourist attraction will strive from all the extra attention.

Start Attracting Tourists Right Away

The truth is that attracting tourists with a dedicated mobile app isn’t difficult. All you need is a high-end travel app, with engaging features and some content to share. Once you’re set-up, your app will do the rest of the work for you.

Now you must be wondering how you could get a custom tourism app, without breaking the bank. Luckily, we’ve got just the solution for you.

At Eventya, we specialize in helping tourist attractions strive with our intuitive, no-code app builder. This enables you to easily create your native mobile app, at a fraction of the cost.