It’s been almost a year since SeatGuru first launched for iOS, letting travelers secure the best seats on their flights from their mobile device. And yesterday, the TripAdvisor-owned company quietly launched a brand new iOS app with a revamped design and additional photo features to help illustrate aircraft seat and cabin appearance.
Just to recap, SeatGuru was launched by business traveler Matthew Daimler more than a decade ago, after becoming frustrated at the differences between seating arrangements across airlines. In short, he was determined to collect this data and share it with other fussy travelers. The result? A single, color-coded interactive airplane seating chart. Green is a ‘good’ seat, yellow is a ‘not-so-good’ seat, and red is a ‘avoid-at-all-costs seat’.
In the ten years since launch, SeatGuru has expanded to cover more than 700 aircraft seat maps across almost 100 airlines. Oh, and in 2007, SeatGuru was acquired by TripAdvisor.
SeatGuru v2.0
With the latest version of the iOS app, it does hold a similar look and feel to the original, so it’s not a complete redesign. But it does now support the iPhone 5 (which means full screen), and there is new high-res seat maps with new iconography. Moreover, true to any modern app worth its salt, it now has a Facebook login feature that enables you to group all your contributions in a new ‘My Stuff’ section.
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As alluded to already, users can also now upload photos of their seating arrangement, and annotate with comments.
At the time of writing, SeatGuru draws on more than 45,000+ reviews on airline seats and associated services and, since last month, TripAdvisor integration lets users search for and book flights directly through the app too.
SeatGuru has come a long way since its original Web-only guise, developed from one man’s frustrations around lack of detailed information on flights. Version 2.0 is available to download from the App Store now.
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Feature Image Credit – Thinkstock
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