So, the big day’s come and you’re ready to submit! If you haven’t done so already, you’ll need to set up your account.

Sit down with your product definition, country distribution list and have your marketing copy plus developer notes ready.

Be sure to list any user name and passwords the tester will need to run through your feature list. Remember, if it doesn’t work like you advertise, your app will get rejected.

Once you finalize the submission and hit the final button, sit back, high-five everyone and then wait….

There are hundreds to thousands of apps submitted daily and so, as you can imagine, it takes a bit for your app to get reviewed.

Sit tight, if you have any issues, they will come back and let you know what you might need to fix.

If they don’t find anything out of the ordinary, it will get approved and go live in the stores you chose.

The downside is that you don’t receive an email letting you know your app is approved, so you’ll need to check often.

Once you’re live, the key is to keep your marketing copy and version notes updated. This helps potential buyers to know what’s been improved and what the app currently offers.

If you have the opportunity to market your app, you can advertise in the typical ways, partner with someone to provide traffic or buzz or virally promote your app.

The magic place to be is the “Top 20” list on Travel and the even more magical place is the Top 20 apps, period. It’s tough to land and stay on the coveted list if you’re not a game, Facebook or Google, but you should certainly keep your aspirations high and make that a goal.

Sometimes an app gets luck and gets picked up by Apple for marketing inclusion, but most often you must make your own noise to get noticed.

Think of a unique way your app can do that and keep that in mind when you define your product, marketing copy or launch promotion.

Best practices encourage your to keep your version updates to the minimum necessary to avoid irritating customers, especially if your app has a server component to it.

It also helps you not to have a pending submission version while you are supporting a legacy version for too long.

Good luck and enjoy seeing your app live on iTunes App Store!

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

Testing and QA:

User cases are key to preparation during the final phase before app submission.

Be sure to test everything on the emulator and actual device you support. There have been instances of differences between environments including response time, screen display and functionality.

The emulator lacks real time limitations like internet connection testing for 3G versus EDGE.

When we began, the general public didn’t have access to automated functional testing.

As a result, one of our developers created his own, UISpec, which is currently available as an open source component [It writes scripts around your testing keys].

Another important detail when testing these apps on the phone device, is that it has to be done from a publicly accessible server, as most corporations won’t let an iphone connect through the firewall.

Figure out early in the process for an alternate solution before developing and testing.

Remember that iPhone guidelines address specifics to iPhone and not iTouch, so take into consideration not to force capabilities to work on new OSs.

As a developer you need to think about features, so check on which device to see if you can handle, such as camera version, phone version, GPS usage, photos for the device etc.

You will learn some lessons along the way during the guideline and review process that will refine your product development, testing and product definition, and overall user experience.

Remember too that Apple’s ad hoc distribution allows for up to 100 people to “beta test” your app before you launch it publicly.

We’d recommend you take advantage of that to gain feedback and test the process.

You also receive up to 50 promo coupons for promo when it does go live on iTunes as part of the developer kit.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

Client and server development.

These elements are seen as separate parts of the process but are obviously very complementary.

Some apps, like TripCase, have a server side to the development. You need to define this as part of the overall product definition.

This server side is a learning curve for every developer, even if they’re a master in another technology outside of mobile.

Most developers don’t have pre-set limitations on client or server side, but for mobile you need to think very differently.

Because of that, and the bugs that will arise, testing is very important in your development process.

Be strategic when you think about they type of app you’re building. How will it affect partnerships (api’s, data sharing etc) and the business model?

The Apple framework SDK that is provided can be used to build everything you want for a basic app.

The XCode coding base provides a visual tool but it might be limiting for what you want your app to be, so challenge yourself to think outside of those guidelines.

For example:

• You will have more control over the UI if you don’t use the builder and it would be easier to contain
• We might recommend coding the  UI yourself because it will allow you the  flexibility for custom components. More control allows you to change things easier.
• Custom component design will force a developer to think differently  to stretch the imagination of the components
• Make your own components so that they don’t always look standard. Ie: our main screen is custom. TripCase is a functional application, not a game etc so again it goes back to product definition, but some developing is more intense.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

User Experience

The next stage is to examine and understand the device/client user experience and design.

One of the most important things to do here is simply to read Apple’s HIG (Human Interface Guidelines’) before you begin to ensure you are within their recommended framework.

Don’t feel limited with the HIG, as it’s meant as purely a guide, but keep it front of mind.

Remember that for travel apps, the average user interacts for three minutes maximum, so design actions into small flows for fastest response time.

It is also worth looking at caching in the background of the app, primarily to allow a faster UI.

Other elements to consider:

• Iterative and collaborative design to incorporate consumer feedback or a new and creative way to accomplish something you hadn’t initially had in scope.
• Collaboration with your development team is important to avoid rejections based on inconsistency.
• Remember the mobile screen is much smaller and so you need to adjust your design to accommodate that and not just “squish” your design into the screen.
• Consumers, especially Apple users, are used to being empowered and are quick to give feedback. This will help guide you and better understand what they want from your app.

Remember that sometimes you are not your target market, so you need to look at your app on the device in the environment that your users will experience it.

A good – although not immediately obvious – trick is to run through a terminal, for example. This will help recreate the experience users might have rushing to catch a flight.

Another is to use the GPS systems from a rental car, as a user might as they look for a hotel.

Be thorough on use cases to help capture what is needed in design and UI and assume what the traveler will need or want next so you can make it as intuitive as possible.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

Product Definition

Ultimately this step drives everything and all other stages of development.

Definition of your main objective and goals are a great foundation but you must be willing to be open to changes as you go through your development.

Be open to learning along the way as mobile development will bring a learning curve if you have not yet done it.

Some things to consider for product definition:

• Device type – iPhone or iTouch. Coming soon, you will need to consider iPad as well.
• The minimum Operating System (OS) you will support.
• Price for the application and business model to support that decision.
• Distribution (global or domestic) needs to be defined for UI and development.
• Are you launching a new brand or extending an existing one? If existing, be sure you do on mobile what you do well on the web or offline.
• How will you handle version control? Upgrade, backwards compatible, kill and relaunch?
• The network of the phone carrier – can it handle the design and platform elements like GPS
• Server compatibility with the different app versions

The last step is to prepare to do it all over again as you will inevitably have bugs and customer feedback will help further define the application’s direction.

In addition, be sure to foster a relationship with Apple if you have an enterprise account level agreement.

NB: This How To series is authored by Robyn Grassanovits, Amy Dillon, Brian Knorr, Dr Maher Ali, Shannon Mihalakos and Carmen Velazquez of TripCase – an iPhone app to handle trip and itinerary management by Sabre.

Hotel-deals syndicator Travelscream plans to release at the end of this month a free iPhone app which would enable hotel partners to promote ancillary services, from spa treatments to dining and tours, to hotel guests before, during and after their stays.

For a flat fee, hoteliers would be able to use ancillary services’ content already loaded into Travelscream’s Social Media Toolkit dashboard or they can upload unpublished or additional offers targeted to particular guests or groups.

Travelscream co-founder and CEO Tom Griffin says hotel guests will receive a link to the iPhone app — which will be coming to Blackberry and Android devices, too — in their confirmation e-mails and the hotels get notified when a customer downloads the app.

Hotels can then offer consumers ancillary services on mobile devices before and durings their stays, and might even promote room specials after guests have completed their stays.

Griffin likens the Travelscream smartphone app to an opaque channel because hotels can offer guests unpublished inventory.

The app isn’t available yet to the public, but here’s a demo website.

This article is the first press mention of the app, and Travelscream officials plan to make an official announcement about it at Travelcom 2010 in Dallas next week.

Travelscream is offering licensing agreements with hotels at an introductory — but renewable rate — of $1,000 per year.

The licensing agreements involve no revenue share, Griffin says, adding “we didn’t want to get into the revenue share business.” Hotels keep all of the incremental revenue they earn through the app.

Developed by a third-party software company, the app is unique in the ancillary revenue opportunities it offers to the lodging industry, Griffin says.

Griffin says Travelscream has verbal commitments from several major U.S. hotel chains to participate in the service.

Deborah Mills, a well known doctor-cum-author in the travel medicine sector, has switched channels and unveiled a mobile application for those who fall ill on holiday.

The new extension to the dog-eared healthy travelling guidebook features a series of areas that allow travellers to identify health complaints and establish what they should do next.

The Travel Health app is categorised into top-level segments including symptom search, first aid advice and common complaints associated with travel.

Users are prompted to self-diagnose to a certain level until the system suggests that medical treatment be sought or advice given on drugs to be taken.

Launched in mid-February 2010, the paid-for iPhone and iTouch app has already secured 5,000 downloads and follows the success of Mills’s travel book Travelling Book.

Colleague Dr Nelson Lau says:

“At this stage, we have chosen not to include any location specific features as we wanted it to be fully functional even when travelers have no access to wi-fi or a phone network, which is commonly the case when traveling in remote or third world countries.”

Versions of the app in the future are expected to include sections on exotic travel medicine diseases, things to do before travel, what to do when returning home and still feeling unwell, video tutorials and translators.

Travel technology firm OpenWays is attempting a major push to the world’s hotel chains with a new system which allows customers to open doors with a mobile.

The system works by sending an digitally encrypted audio bleep to the door locking mechanism from any smartphone.

Customers are given a code when they check in to a hotel which then sits within a downloadable app on their iPhone, Android or Blackberry device.

The technology was created so it would work with existing locks that use the Crypto Acoustic Credential system, a standard on many electronic access control and locking devices such as those in hotels.

OpenWays says the system can be integrated into existing phone app concierge services made by hotel chains or as a standalone function.

It claims the system also makes it easier for hotels to handle security for when customers lose their room keys.

The system can also be activated on a person’s handset without visiting the reception desk – a move likely to trigger the ire of critics who suggest the important of customer service is on the wane in the hospitality industry.

The company is currently targeting the big hotel groups in the industry and will be exhibiting at the ITB trade show in Berlin this month. A number of North American and European chains and casino groups are expected to install the system shortly.

Rearden Commerce, which offers corporate travel booking and expense management, released an iPhone app which mirrors its Web-based Personal Assistant — both are mashups of multiple applications.

Mobile expert Norm Rose, who heads Travel Tech Consulting, agrees that the Rearden Commerce iPhone app is differentiated from most.

“Rearden is essentially a mashup of multiple applications so its iPhone app follows the same model,” Rose says. “That does not say that the other apps don’t have multiple functions, but they are not necessarily mashups of multiple apps.”

Rearden says its new Mobile Personal Assistant for the iPhone contains the following apps:

• Access complete travel itineraries
• Receive real-time updates on your flight’s status
• View airport parking reservations
• Reserve discounted car service
• Get directions using Google Maps
• Access weather forecasts for all travel destinations
• View RSVPs of people you’ve invited to dinner
• Search location-based restaurants, read reviews and make reservations
• Email travel and dinner plans to friends and colleagues
• Click-to-call the travel agency

Tony D’Astolfo, Rearden’s vice president of worldwide sales, says the company’s strategy was to consolidate its apps so travelers don’t have to “sift through tons of applications on the iPhone.”

“Why not have one mega-application that holds all of a user’s personal preferences, gives them access to content relevant to them and enables them to search for services relevant to their needs,” D’Astolfo says.

Rearden launched its first mobile technologies in May 2008 and has a Blackberry apps, the company says.

The new iPhone app, as well as multiple versions of the Blackberry app, were developed in-house. The team is working on a mobile Web application where travelers would be able to access content from some 160,000 providers from any smartphone.

Rearden allowed several corporate clients to pilot the iPhone app in January before launching it publicly in late February.

Today’s long awaited and widely speculated announcement from Apple to launch its new tablet-style iPad product has set the tech world’s tongues wagging furiously.

It will probably be also causing a few furrowed brows in the higher echelons of Google and Microsoft, given how irritatingly successful Apple appears to be at marketing almost everything it produces.

Indeed, Amazon and those behind its Kindle product are probably shifting extremely nervously in the seats.

But why?

Firstly, by virtue of the iPad being yet another funky Apple product means that it will automatically be the must-have device for later this year, or at least amongst those in the tech community.

Those with experience of Apple products will no doubt wait for version 2 of the iPad – shipped bug-free and often at a far cheaper price.

Secondly, if the convergence of devices (laptop-to-TV-to-mobile) is to take place, then something like the iPad is obviously well placed.

[Product review from Engadget]

The implications for the humble traveller are far too difficult to determine though.

Many parts of the travel industry are still struggling to get their heads around simple mobile devices being a de rigeur gadget for travellers – a device they want to use continually throughout a trip – although the penny has clearly dropped and iPhone apps are now the tech software product of choice within development labs across the sector.

To make the extension that travellers will want to take a iPad-style device with them is yet another compelling idea to ponder.

For business travellers, iPad and its ilk seems like a home run.

The argument that leisure travellers, at least within the next few years, will take a tablet on holiday is less certain.

Take four executives close to the touch, design and trip content parts of the sector and you get pretty interesting answers:

• Toby Cunningham, Sabre Travel Studios: “Apple’s iPad is a further example of how consumer devices are taking digital interactions past the web. Paying attention to the expanding ecosystem of usable “access points” for travelers to shop, plan, book, and retrieve travel information is going to be increasingly important. With all of the new, efficient interactions for travelers available through these devices, I think we can say start saying goodbye to the standard web “cannonball” formats.”

• Andrew Owen-Jones, chief executive of Traveltainment: “President Obama said in his State of the Union speech that Jobs must be our number 1 priority.  Apple has not provided a channel for distribution before but with the Ipad this may now change.  An attractive personal medium which gets the right balance between media distribution and customer control will make us all think differently about how we reach customers.  For the first time Steve Jobs may be a priority in travel distribution.  At least he will make us all think about how we interact with consumers.”

• Paul Dawson, experience director, EMC Conchango: “I think that the choice of device when you travel is a matter of huge personal preference. Some of us type faster than we write, so a netbook and a mobile is the lowest level we’ll stoop to when travelling. The key for anyone providing an in-between device, especially if it uses touch, is to make sure that it seamlessly integrates and synchronises to all the other devices we have. If it does, and allows us to do all the things we can on those other devices, but with a battery life and form-factor to die for, then in-between touch devices only have to solve the speed of input problem in order that we all use them as a matter of personal preference. But will they? Doubtful.. so in the meantime, their applications have to be carefully crafted in order that we don’t try to do things on them we really shouldn’t. I’m talking about writing long emails by the way… nothing else.”

• Justin Cooke, managing director, Fortune Cookie: “The combination of a screen larger than a mobile on a device smaller and lighter than a netbook with a touch-based interface and the beauty of Apple’s product design opens up massive opportunities. Launching the product at a time when the travel sector HAS to reinvent itself and when consumer’s demands and expectations of mobile technology have never been higher will result an entirely new layer of applications, services and entire business propositions. Global roaming and digital services that I consume while on holiday for starters. Am I excited? You bet I am.”

• Peter Harrison, vice president of marketing, TripIt: “We’re really excited about the new iPad. TripIt already powers many of the top travel apps on the iPhone and lots of travelers use our free TripIt iPhone app every day. We’ll be looking at how the new iPad can use the existing iPhone apps, and new ways to deliver TripIt travel plans, TripIt Pro flight alerts and even more detailed trip information on the iPad.”

• Matthew Cashmore, innovation ecosystem manager, Lonely Planet: We’ve seen great success with our iPhone City Guides, and now our Augmented Reality Guides on Android, anything that allows us to better serve the traveller is brilliant news. We know there’s a huge hunger with our users to access our content digitally, wirelessly and when they need it. The new Apple iPad will open up new opportunities for us to bring the rest of our portfolio to travellers with the device’s new book reading capabilities.”
• Gerry Samuels, managing director, Mobile Travel Technologies: “It would seem the form factor, fragility and lack of a camera and real keyboard means that it is more suited to digital media consumption than creation.  It seems like something that users would enjoy better in their living/hotel room rather than walking down the street.  That said the fact that it comes with GPS, compass and 3G connectivity (3G only on the more expensive models) would seem to indicate that Apple hopes for it to be used on the go. In terms of travel we see it more useful for planning either pre-trip or during the trip (e.g. turn it on mainly the evening, to collect all the pictures, notes , GPS positions recorded during the day with my iPhone, and then publish e.g. to my Facebook or Flickr account). The iPhone and other more traditional devices would seem to be more suited to actual “on the go” travel activities.”

Agree?

South East Asian travel content site TravelFish has unveiled its new iPhone app for the Angkor region of Cambodia and launched a thinly veiled attack on bigger travel publishers.

The app features guides, recommendations, tours and images for the historic Khymer temple site near Siem Reap and is available from the iTunes appstore.

But with a plethora of iPhone travel content apps launching in the store almost on a daily basis, TravelFish managing director Stuart McDonald says publishers need to think carefully about the pros and cons of investing in products.

TravelFish hopes to launch around 30 apps over the course of 2010 in the South East Asia region, with a product for one of Thailand’s popular islands currently waiting for Apple approval.

McDonald says there is huge opportunity for niche content providers such as itself because the likes of Lonely Planet, which has an app strategy of its own, are too focused on building apps for places where they can get an easy return.

“Because of this focus, we’re able to invest in producing guides to places that are not cost effective to bigger players like LP. There is no way in a pink fit LP would release 30+ apps just for South East Asia – they just cherry pick the big cash cows, cross their fingers and hope for the best.”

The argument goes to the heart of the new wave of online content publishing where niche players can supposedly concentrate on specific areas and leave the larger firms – often with legacy print publishing businesses – to worry about volumes and general coverage of a region.

To this end, traditional travel publishers are also unable to invest in the quality and content included in apps because of the ROI issue.

McDonald says: “We plan to pour a lot of the cash sloshing around into the apps as I think longer term they’ll be the big payout.”

Priceline made available a new, free iPhone app, Hotel Negotiator Version 2.0, which uses the iPhone 3G’s electronic compass functionality.

With Hotel Radar, the name Priceline gives to the main enhancement in Version 2.0, users can point the iPhone in a particular direction and the app displays area hotels, including published room rate, star level and distance.

Not a bad mobile option if you are wandering city streets looking for a place to stay or to have a drink — or if you’ve already had a drink and are trying to find your hotel again.

When Hotel Radar picks up a cluster of hotels, users can tap the cluster for a list of the hotels, Priceline says.

Still under the radar, however, are Priceline’s Name Your Own Price opaque hotels. Although you can book both published and Name Your Own Price hotels with Hotel Negotiator, Hotel Radar does its thing for published-price hotels only.

Brian Ek’s the travel ekspert blog points to the new release’s other enhancements, including faster bidding and map displays, additional hotel photos and a mute button.

Enough said.

Plenty of praise for a major development by mobile handset manufacturer Nokia to produce what some believe is a serious threat to the sat-nav GPS systems but is probably more of a rearguard against recent similar moves by Google.

The upgraded Ovi maps are being touted as a personal sat-nav (it uses similar tracking technology) coupled with trip planning and other travel-friendly features such as location and activity search and networking.

Missing from the announcement was any mention of Dopplr, the travel social network and trip planning business that Nokia acquired in October 2009.

So while much has been made of how Nokia is effectively providing sat-nav services for free on its handsets (a move likely to worry the likes of TomTom et al), nothing has been said about Dopplr and the obvious synergy it would have with such a hugely personal, handset-based networking tool.

When asked if Dopplr would be included at a later date, an official at Nokia HQ in Finland says:

“We are looking into ways how to utilise the expertise brought in by Dopplr. There’s no decisions made yet on that.”

Dopplr fans will presume Nokia intends to integrate the service at some point otherwise many will wonder what wider strategy was behind the original acquisition.

Nokia quickly moved Dopplr into what it calls the Location team after it acquired the business last year. Co-founder and CEO Marko Ahtisaari was soon appointed head of the mobile maker’s design department.

Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president for Nokia, says:

“Nokia is the only company with a mobile navigation service for both drivers and pedestrians that works across the world. Unlike the legacy car navigation manufacturers, we don’t make you buy maps for different countries or regions even if you’re only visiting for a few days. We offer both navigation and maps free of charge, with all the high-end functionality and features that people now expect.”

Two travel companies – HostelWorld and Teletext Holidays – have joined the frantic rush to develop Apple iPhone applications.

The Dublin-based HostelWorld app is a major attempt at replicating much of the functionality on the main website onto the handset including hostel bookings, ability to view photos and read reviews of accommodation and pinpoint a user’s location on a local.

The free app also allows users to store favourites and personal preferences for later use.

Meanwhile, Teletext Holidays has developed a much simpler product to showcase its deals.

The app pumps out a regular daily dose of special product rates from the main Teletext Holidays website. Users can select individual deals to view images and be connected by phone to the seller.

Teletext has also include a save function to allow users to store different items.

Another week, another trip and itinerary management website announcement – this time with bragging rights going to TripIt which has launched its Blackberry app this week.

The company says the new app will be free and its launch follows testing around the user base for a few months.

The app joins TripIt’s existing products for the iPhone and Android platforms.

Similarly to the existing apps, TripIt on the Blackberry puts a traveller’s itinerary on on the handset, including travel confirmation emails from corporate booking sites and corporate travel agencies.

There is a sync function to put details into the BlackBerry calendar and, by extension, to the user’s existing Microsoft Outlook calendar.

The launch follows recent moves by fledgling rival Traxo, which is aggressively targeting a similar subset of travellers with its own range of tools and rhetoric.

But with mobile a key component of both services, ensuring the core functionality is available across as many platforms as possible appears to be a major focus for both companies.

“Traxo’s strategy is not to develop apps itself but to develop device agnostic apps with partners who already have mobile apps. Traxo plans on getting this accomplished in 2010,” a spokeswoman says.