Features of Mobile Tracking Apps: A Review of Literature and Analysis of Current Apps Compared Against Travel Agency Requirements

Nowadays tourists have high expectations on the service quality provided by travel agencies. In order to increase service quality, there is a growth of using mobile apps by travel agencies which enables tourists to navigate places of interest, traveling information and plan trips ahead time. Although travel agencies are willing to invest in mobile apps for customer experience enhancement, the potential of mobile tracking apps for manager is largely unexplored. In the provision of transportation services, travel agencies must obtain real-time, relevant trip status from the transportation service providers and relay the information to the tourist. This paper aims to review relevant literature in mobile vehicle tracking applications by searching online vendor markets (online store for Apple and Google Android) and journal database. Findings of literature review show there is a lack of mobile vehicle tracking apps which enables managers in travel agencies to obtain location-based information. In order to gather desired features of mobile vehicles tracking apps for travel agencies and issues faced by them, interviews were conducted with director and project manager of a reputable travel agency namely NCR Travel and Tours located in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. Interview findings show the issues identified are poor communication and time coordination between the manager, driver and tour guide due to lack of real time location-based information of the driver. Based on literature review and requirements provided by NCR, this study proposes key features of mobile vehicles tracking apps for travel agencies. The proposed mobile apps possess trip scheduling feature and it enables the manager to track location of the driver in real time based on pre-determined route. Google Maps Direction API is used to determine the best route and Firebase Realtime Database is used to communicate the trip status between manager and driver. A prototype is proposed, and user acceptance test are conducted in future work.