Travelocity TravelTools

Developer: Travelocity
Price: FREE
Date Listed in App Store: 7/5/2008
Version Reviewed: 1.0

If you travel a lot, up to date flight times and TSA wait time can be some of the most useful information to have on the go. Checking for flight delays is something I do rather psychotically when on the go. But does this application really add much value over the iPhone optimized Travelocity site?

The app provides 4 main sections: Flights, Hotels Near Me, My Trips and Preferences.

Flights is where most people will spend their time.  You can do the same things here that you can on the Travelocity iPhone site, search  flight schedules for all airlines between 2 airports and then select one to get details.  Navigation gets a little wonky here -- they might want to re-read the human interface guidelines from Apple.  It gets confusing trying to navigate back to the list of flights.  Also, it seems to only show you the first 8 with no way to get to others later in the day or even other days.

If you know your flight number you can skip right to the gate and wait time information.  Useful especially if you are getting ready to head to the airport.

The Hotels Near Me feature is interesting if not all that useful.  I can't remember more than once that I've been stuck in some far away place without a hotel reservation, or a floor somewhere, or at least an all night bar.  But if that's not good enough for you, this is the app for you.  Or, really, you can just use the built in Maps application and do a search for hotel.

I'm not a Travelocity customer so I couldn't test out the My Trips feature.  Guessing this might be the most useful of all features, if you are a Travelocity customer that is.  Is anyone a Travelocity customer?  Anyone other than that damn gnome?

Preferences are just lets you enter your Travelocity.com login info to sync your trip info. Nothing useful like favorite airports or storing frequent flyer info or anything like that.

For anyone who is not a Travelocity customer, this app adds very little over the Travelocity iPhone optimized site.  If you are a regular Travelocity customer, being able to have your itineraries with you might make this worth downloading. But navigation issues and bugs make this application rather annoying to use at times.

[rating: 2/5]