HomeAway launches iPhone app

Tuesday, August 10th 2010 - comments (0)

They've done it again! HomeAway has pulled further ahead of the pack by being the first large vacation rentals portal to launch an app for the oh-so-sexy iPhone.

Their app is free to use and was put together by Mobiata, a firm with a good track record for creating travel apps for the world's most popular smartphone.

The software includes some extremely nice features that probably should figure more prominently on traditional rental websites rather than just on a smartphone.

These include:

• Access to over 230,000 vacation rentals worldwide.
• Tools to make it easy to share property information with friends via email, Facebook and Twitter.
• Browse vacation rentals via Google maps.

The ease of sharing property information via the biggest social networks is long overdue and most rental websites would do well to make this easier. Cookie-based or login only shortlists don't work too well for sharing stuff and most sites should take a look at improving things.

As for being able to browse property via Google maps - hoooorah! Long overdue and it highlights that too few rental sites have a decent map search. Traditional websites could learn a lot from these app design guys.

Given the explosion of smartphone sales and the trend towards higher mobile internet use (which is expected to surpass PC-browsing within years!), having a smartphone strategy will be critical for serious rental websites.

We expect to see a slew of other vacation rental portals scramble to catch up.

iPhone users can get the app for free via iTunes.

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