TripAdvisor App Now Includes Virtual Tours
February 18, 2011
Travelers know the drill: they’ve arrived in a strange city and have no idea what restaurants or other interesting things to do are near their hotel. Or worse, the hotel that looked beautiful in the brochure is in fact, a terrible place to spend the night. Now one of the top travel apps for the iPad has added a cool feature that makes it easier to not only find a suitable place to call home for a night or two, but knows what other points of interest are near the hotel.
TripAdvisor for the iPad now includes a virtual tour feature. This functionality allows travelers to take a virtual walk through their travel destination with nearby places superimposed over Street View from Google.
"With virtual tours on the TripAdvisor iPad app, we've made the experience even more engaging and helpful for travelers...who have ever booked a hotel or restaurant and arrived only to be disappointed by the neighborhood, this feature brings a whole new way to gain insights into their destination. Now travelers can get the full picture in advance, along with the wisdom of TripAdvisor's more than 40 million reviews and opinions."The new service isn’t perfect. For one, most locations do not yet include the virtual tour feature. Second, tours are incredibly slow to load, even with a quick Wi-Fi connection. Still, it’s a nice feature and one that should improve over time. The free TripAdvisor app is available in the App Store.
