Building an iOS App for Travel Tracking

JatApp developed 2BeAdventurous, a travel application that allows people to track their trips and share adventures with followers. Users can document their tourist routes by adding photos and locations, as well as follow their friends’ journeys.

Background story

With a variety of social media apps that allow people to show their daily routines to the world, travel enthusiasts want to have specific tools to document their trips and share them with like-minded people.

Travel trackers enable users to tell about their journeys, add posts with photos and locations, follow other travelers, and communicate with them via comments. Being a keen traveler, our client decided to create a social media app for sharing his adventures when visiting different places and countries all over the world.

About the client

Our client is a travel enthusiast from the United Kingdom. During one of his trips, he realized that he didn’t have tools to share his travel experience, except by posting photos on social networks. That’s why the client wanted to create an app that lets his friends and family follow his scenic routes, and lets him track other travelers’ adventures. With that idea in his mind, the client turned to JatApp to help him bring it to life.

Challenge

Our cooperation with a client started in 2018. The discovery phase took around 2,5 months as we had to thoroughly discuss all development stages, taking into account the client’s corrections and comments.

When we finally agreed on the project scope, the client made a decision to put the project on hold. In a year and a half, he came back to JatApp to finish the job. We developed an MVP in four months and it became a basis for a free version of an application.

As the client wanted to build a tracking app, we had to connect the system with a map SDK for displaying travel routes. Our developers integrated the app with Apple Maps so that the first picture of a post would be a map with locations a user visited.

Solution

Mobile app development

JatApp developers used Swift to build a native iOS application. We created a set of features targeted at a specific audience ‒ travelers, and packed these features into an intuitive user interface.
Integration with Apple Maps

To display a travel route as an interactive map with points, we had to integrate the system with Apple Maps. We used MapKit to embed maps directly into the application. This way each new route added to the app is built in real time.
Push notifications

We used Firebase Cloud Messaging (FCM) to implement push notifications in the app. The application sends the required notification data to FCM, while FCM displays the notification on the user’s device.

Technologies Used

PHP (Laravel)
AWS
Native (Swift)
Apple Maps
Firebase

Results

Post creation

Users can create posts to describe their trips and adventures. They enter dates and locations, add photos, and indicate the type of transport. The first picture of the post is a map, where location points are connected with a curve.

Friending and following

Users can find friends through their contact lists and follow them in the app. They can add likes and comments to each other’s posts. The app also includes premium (paid) features, like the possibility to see where your friends are on the map and get notifications when friends move from country to country.

Trip tracking

With 2BeAdventurous, users can keep track of how many days they travel, how many places/countries they visited, and how many trips they had. Users can also follow their friends’ trips and know where they currently are.

Notification system

A user gets notifications when someone likes or comments on their post, wants to follow them, or approves a follow request. A follow request may be rejected and the person won’t be able to see the user’s posts.

Benefits

Although 2BeAdventurous has not been long on the market, it is highly appraised by users. JatApp continues providing maintenance services to ensure seamless operation of the product. The client also plans to add new features to the app in the future.