Travelocity app upgrade offers insight on user trends.

It seems that the travel industry is constantly looking for ways to cash in on the mobile revolution. On any given day you can read about established travel companies releasing new apps or start-ups announcing new ways to incorporate the cell phone into travel. While the quantity of mobile travel applications is consistently rising, the quality (and usefulness) of all of these apps is still up for debate.

Are people really interested, for example, in checking out the view from their hotel room before checking in?

Only time will tell how consumers respond to new technology, but a new iPhone app update from Travelocity offers some insight into how travelers are adapting old purchasing behaviors.

Travelocity’s iPhone application was one of the first introduced by an online travel company, but it hasn’t been well reviewed by users in the iTunes store. A new update based on user trends may change that.

In a recent announcement, Travelocity revealed that more than 60 percent of hotels booked on the Travelocity iPhone application happen on the same day of the hotel stay. “Whether on a road trip or going on a spontaneous getaway, lots of travelers are regularly making last-minute bookings on a mobile device,” said Beth Murphy, Travelocity’s vice president of product marketing.

As a result, Travelocity added the option of booking “Top Secret Hotels” to its iPhone application. This feature allows customers to book heavily discounted hotels at the last minute without knowing the name of the hotel until after booking.

Working in a fairly new industry like mobile applications calls for a lot of guesswork and innovation from developers, but that can also lead to a lot of misses. It will be interesting to see if updates based on user data will produce better results.