Beyond the book: tripwolf iPhone travel guides improve on the go

Article by Adena Harford

A mobile travel guide library with tips from the travel community â€" and without roaming costs!

Vienna, February 9, 2010. Today social travel guide tripwolf.com is launching its new travel guide app for the iPhone. It is the world’s first mobile travel guide that is updated by tens of thousands of travelers around the world â€" and around the clock! tripwolf combines travel information from traditional print guide publishers like “Footprint” (UK) and “Marco Polo” (Germany) with user generated content from the tripwolf community. “With the tripwolf app, you can literally put the whole world into your pocket”, says tripwolf CEO Sebastian Heinzel. “The tripwolf travel guides on the iPhone are not only lighter, but also more up-to-date than traditional printed travel guides â€" and our users help us make them better and better!”

More content and features than everToday’s new release of the tripwolf iPhone app contains more premium content from “Footprint” and “Marco Polo” guides than ever. It also makes country guides and region-specific guides available for the first time in addition to the popular city guides. New interactive features have been integrated: Travelers can upload photos from their iPhones, vote for locations, write reviews, search for points of interest around them, and add newly discovered places to the tripwolf travel guides. All of this works offline, eliminating data roaming costs while traveling: The information is automatically synchronized once a traveler goes online again. “We are taking the tripwolf iPhone app to a new level”, says tripwolf COO Alexander Trieb. “Our combination of premium quality content and community feedback is unique in the marketplace.”

“Freemium model” for travel guidestripwolf travel guides on the iPhone are completely free for nearly 50,000 destinations worldwide. For some destinations tripwolf offers a particularly wide range of premium information: Travel guides for the cities Amsterdam, Barcelona, Berlin, Bologna, Florence, Madrid, Milan, Paris, Rome, Salzburg, Turin and Vienna as well as for the countries Denmark, England, Finland, France, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Scotland and Spain match traditional travel guide books in terms of quality and coverage. Premium content for these destinations can be downloaded for only 4,99 Euros. “This is a small price considering that tripwolf travel guides always stay up-to-date. Three years down the line they will still contain the hottest tips on Rome or Paris”, says Trieb. Thanks to a cooperation with Austria’s national tourism organization, Austria.info, every user gets the premium travel guide of Austria for free.

The tripwolf iPhone app was developed jointly by tripwolf’s team in Vienna and Salzburg Research, an Austrian research organization focused on innovative mobile solutions.

Features of the new tripwolf iPhone app* travel info on 50,000 cities, countries and regions worldwide* more than 550,000 geocoded Points of Interest worldwide* professional content from Marco Polo and Footprint travel guides* constant updates and improvements by the tripwolf community * download and offline use of travel guides (no data roaming costs!) * user locating to show points of interests in the vicinity â€" even in offline mode!* photo uploads and user reviews (can be written offline as well)* available in 5 languages (English, German, French, Spanish and Italian)

The free tripwolf iPhone app can be downloaded from the iTunes Store with this link:http://tinyurl.com/ydl5bbj

source: www.worldtogether.org