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Project Overview

Find A Park is a mobile application that puts all Australian holiday parks in the palm of your hand. No more out of date, bulky caravan park and camping ground guides and directories. Search for your holiday park by name, town, state, proximity features, amenities, park user group memberships and much more...

With Find A Park all the information you'll ever need about holiday parks is just a click away - park details, photos, interactive contacts, website, user reviews, hot deals maps, routes and directions from your current location to your preferred park destination.

It's all here!

Organisation

Find A Park Pty Ltd

Team

David Holland, Strategist - Concept creator for the app. Background in tourism, caravan & camping industry.
Rafe Roberts, Evil Overlord - App developer and technology guru. Seeks constant improvement so the app is never truly finished.
Vaughan James, Designer, Creative Ninja - Responsible for visual presentation of app and website design.
Colin Bartley – Social media Maharishi, dreams of content.

Project Brief

Our brief was to build the first Australian mobile app designed specifically for holiday road travellers wining to find caravan parks and holiday accommodation anywhere in Australia.

The app had to be capable of replacing bulky printed caravan park guides and directories by improving user experience and the information provided. Our research found that we needed to display detailed descriptions and photos of all Australian caravan, camping and holiday accommodation parks to be relevant. Other features were to be details of park amenities, special offers, user reviews, interactive maps, routes and directions from the user's current location to the destination park.

Contact listings were to allow users to interact with the parks directly from the app - by phone, email and though the parks' booking systems. Park websites were to be viewed in-app. All information, especially prices were to be kept current at all times which is a major benefit of the app over print guides.

The search interface needed to be easy to use and intuitive, allowing searches by park name, town, suburb, and state. An advanced search feature was to allow park searches by a wide range of amenities and features such as pet friendliness, ensuite sites, cabin accommodation, swimming pools and more. Users had to be able to write park reviews for the benefit of other travellers, plan trips and keep a list of favourite parks for future reference and push notification of special offers and events.

Find A Park's mission is to have all travellers with smartphones switch to the benefits of this mobile technology.

Project Innovation / Need

Our brief was to build the first Australian mobile app designed specifically for holiday road travellers wining to find caravan parks and holiday accommodation anywhere in Australia.

The app had to be capable of replacing bulky printed caravan park guides and directories by improving user experience and the information provided. Our research found that we needed to display detailed descriptions and photos of all Australian caravan, camping and holiday accommodation parks to be relevant. Other features were to be details of park amenities, special offers, user reviews, interactive maps, routes and directions from the user's current location to the destination park.

Contact listings were to allow users to interact with the parks directly from the app - by phone, email and though the parks' booking systems. Park websites were to be viewed in-app. All information, especially prices were to be kept current at all times which is a major benefit of the app over print guides.

The search interface needed to be easy to use and intuitive, allowing searches by park name, town, suburb, and state. An advanced search feature was to allow park searches by a wide range of amenities and features such as pet friendliness, ensuite sites, cabin accommodation, swimming pools and more. Users had to be able to write park reviews for the benefit of other travellers, plan trips and keep a list of favourite parks for future reference and push notification of special offers and events.

Find A Park's mission is to have all travellers with smartphones switch to the benefits of this mobile technology.

User Experience

Find A Park was designed by people who have been involved in caravanning and camping for more than 25 years. It's built by ex holiday park operators and park users to make road travel easier for local and international tourists.

Find A Park puts all the information that a road traveller will ever need in the palm of their hand.

The benefits of the Find A Park App over printed holiday accommodation guides are numerous - more information on each property, up-to-the-minute prices and facility details, current specials, user reviews, interactive maps & directions, trip planner and more...

The developers of Find A Park are very conscious of the variation in users knowledge of technology and have made the app to be simple and easy to use. We welcome feedback and have set up a Facebook page and web form to get user comments. As a result of those user comments, new free version updates have been made available for download from iTunes to new features and improvements. Three updates have been provided in the 2 months since release of the app.

We have several new features under development that will be progressively added. Weather and road conditions, service provider listings and local events to name just a few.

Find A Park will empower users to ensure that they get good customer service and value for money from holiday park operators through publishing of user reviews and by featuring parks that users like.

Project Marketing

The marketing and promotion for Find A Park has been predicated around providing users with a positive experience so that sales develop through word of mouth and the "bush telegraph". To that end we have developed in-app systems for user support as well as a support website.

Our aim is to interact with users frequently to add to their holiday experiences and enjoyment. We have developed a Facebook page www.facebook.com/findapark (300+ fans in just 1.5 months) to disseminate articles and information of interest to the specific caravan and camping audience. We welcome postings by users and holiday park operators to the page and promote competitions with substantial prizes (iPAd2) for winners. Surveys and event information are a regular feature of the site. Facebook is backed up by Twitter and we are developing a good following.

Find A Park has developed linkages with travel media, travel blogs and caravan & camping lifestyle TV shows and have received great PR to date.
We have promoted at the national caravan industry expo and will attend all state caravan and camping shows.

The strategy for implementation has been to introduce the app to the largest mobile device market segment (iPhone/iPad) and once thoroughly market tested, port the app to Android and later to Windows 7.