TripAdvisor is a digital resource for tourists and holidaymakers – and it has announced a new deal with Nokia. While TripAdvisor already has free apps available on iPhone and Android, the Nokia deal is a bit bigger. Not only is it coming to Ovi as an application, it’s also being built into Nokia’s own Ovi Maps service – arguably its most successful Ovi product.
What’s the story with Ovi Maps?
When Ovi Maps was re-launched earlier this year, it dropped a bomb on the navigation community. It was a fully-featured navigation service, with turn-by-turn navigation and an option to download the maps you needed – so you could still navigate yourself even if you had no coverage. The service is powered by one of the premier digital mapping companies, NAVTEQ – which Nokia bought out for $8 billion in 2008. Ovi Maps is completely free to use for anyone with a Nokia.
What’s TripAdvisor?
It claims to be the world’s largest travel site – it stores a huge amount of information that anyone planning a trip can access, and use to plan their holiday. The vast majority of the content is user-generated, and it covers a huge amount of information: you can get reviews for holiday locations, restaurants, hotels, trip “guides”, rental information and loads more.
What’s their deal?
The TripAdvisor for Nokia app is much the same as the apps for other platforms. It lets users search and browse content from TripAdvisor, either by keyword or based on the users current location. It also allows users to post reviews from the app, so you can update as you travel.
More importantly, the Ovi Maps service will have a dedicated TripAdvisor service built into it. When using your Ovi Maps service to navigate or search, you can choose to be fed information sourced from TripAdvisor on the locations you’re passing.
What we think?
This reminded me of the recent deal announced between two very similar servicers – Telmap and Lonely Planet. But where that deal was mostly centered around advertising, this one seems to be more about crowd-sourcing. There’s a growing trend towards more open editing when it comes to navigation. Services like OpenStreetMap put the actual maps in the hands of the user, rather than just the reviews and travel information. But it’s an interesting movement to note: the more mobile navigation gets, the more control the end-user has over the content.
Information source: GoMo News.