Ramada Downtown Dubai is about to debut its mobile app. Ramada Downtown Dubai is about to debut its mobile app.

Design
For tablet sites, the main difference in design doesn’t come down to what the users want to get out of it, how deep they go into the site or if they’re there to browse or book, but instead, how they use it.

Customers are using one finger to select things, the same with most smartphones, so buttons need to be big, drop down menus need to be scrapped and it’s important to realise that tablet users like to swipe — the most innovative and successful tablet sites are horizontally designed, breaking away from the conventional vertical-scrolling pages, explains Gregory.

Whether on tablet or smartphone, the way forward for some of the most advanced apps is integration — not with your other platforms, but with other people’s and other companies’. Seatwave is an online ticketing marketplace, and its app is created using application programming interfaces (APIs) — essentially building blocks for different functions.

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These building blocks are then made available to third party developers. One block is its straight-forward ‘Purchase API’ — third parties, such as music blogs and fan sites can use it in their apps, which drives traffic and bookings to Seatwave.

This same concept can just as easily be implemented by hotels — if a travel blog or website is covering a hotel or hotel company, then they could use an API to integrate the hotel’s booking application into their own pages.

The next stage
However, the experts urge that while tablet and smartphone sites and apps are the most pressing issue to deal with, hotels should look to the future — they have discovered how long it takes to get a new platform off the ground and so should be looking at what customers will need in the next year or two, and start planning.

Google TV is currently being launched around the world, which will see websites need to be optimised for a much larger screen, while Google’s Project Glass is likely to be launched in 2014.

“While we’re all doing mobile and tablet work, why not throw new technologies into the mix? If you’re going through a developer, then give them other dimensions to develop your site to. Then you’re ready and you can be the first one there rather than being up to a year behind the surge,” concludes Gregory.

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