Meet AppAtlas: Indoor Navigation Apps

If you do a quick Google search for “How much time does the average person spend lost while traveling?”, while the statistics may not be precise, you will find copious amounts of responses detailing how much time has been saved or how far less common it is to get lost nowadays, with the invention of smartphones and GPS.

And it’s true. In a new town or even a new country? Just whip out your handle iPhone or Android and you’ve got turn by turn directions in the palm of your hand.

It’s getting increasingly harder to GET lost, let alone to BE lost, thanks to the likes of Google maps, iPhone maps, Waze, and other smart device mapping apps and services.

As one responder to a Quora question stated:

“I am hardly ever lost anymore unless my GPS is malfunctioning. I may have taken a wrong turn and need to recover but I’m technically not “lost”, just deviating from the plan.”

Sure previously we had the likes of ‘highly innovative, turn by turn’ printouts we could retrieve from sites like MapQuest – but if you’re truly lost, odds are you didn’t prepare to be, and that computer and dial up internet connection seem to be long out of reach. And even when we did have printable maps with these turn by turn directions or even paper maps from the local convenient store down the street, what happens if we took a wrong turn and suddenly our directions were nonrelevant?

Unfamiliar (Large) Venues

According to the ‘National Human Activity Pattern Survey’, Americans on average, spend 87% of their time in enclosed buildings. And while many of those hours may be in the indoor venues we know best – homes, work, school, and other well-known places – what happens when we’re somewhere we’re not familiar with.

Everyday shopping malls can span near one-and-a-half million square feet (with that infamous famous ‘big American mall’ spanning closer to five million square feet). Casino’s like Las Vegas mega-resort ‘the Excalibur’ has over 4,400 hotel guest rooms (which by the way, didn’t even make the list for top 20 largest casino’s in Vegas), and Stova’s corporate home state’s ‘Maryland Live Casino’ boasts upwards of two million square feet. The Mayo Clinic occupies approximately 15 million square feet! Denver’s (KDEN) airport has nearly 6 million square feet (twice the size of the borough of Manhatten!). The University of Utah campus is nearly 67 million square feet (1535 acres)- a cheap shot compared to Rome, GA’s Berry College campus with its over 1 billion square feet (27,000 acres) campus. Or if you’re the Sultan of Brunei, your personal home is 2, 152,782 square feet.

The Struggle of Navigating Indoor Venues

For event professionals and event attendees who attend conferences, meetings, seminars and other events on a regular basis – the frustration of being in a large venue and not knowing how to navigate between meeting rooms in a limited amount of time, is all too common.

The conference centers, hotels, resorts and other large venues that are hosting meetings and events are living in the printed map time of yesteryear. While maps are readily available for large venues, wayfinding signage here and there and occasionally concierge or an employee to guide someone if they get lost – hotel guests and event attendees deserve and crave the same solutions indoors, that they have access to outdoors – indoor GPS apps.

The Solution – Introducing AppAtlas

The same technology focused masterminds that build event registration platforms, audience response systems, lead retrieval apps, and event engagement apps – bring you AppAtlas.

AppAtlas is an indoor navigation system and indoor wayfinding app, providing turn by turn directions (think indoor GPS app like!), and Blue dot (i.e. pinpoint) directions. Utilizing iBeacons (a class of Bluetooth Low Energy), the small hardware syncs with guest’s smartphone devices that are in close approximate location.

The iBeacon’s that AppAtlas’ indoor wayfinding apps and indoor navigation apps are built on, also allow large venues to incorporate proximity based marketing and messages at specific points of interests (i.e. on-site vendors).

Large-scale venues that work with AppAtlas, have their guests and visitors download a white labeled mobile app from the iOS or Google Play store onto their smartphone. Guests can then open the venue’s wayfinding app and receive turn-by-turn navigation directions from where they are, to where they want to be.

Events, Exhibitions & Tradeshow Wayfinding with Blue-Dot indoor Navigation

AppAtlas isn’t just for large-scale venues with permanent structures. Event professionals that want to enable wayfinding for their attendees, AppAtlas provides “blue dot” navigation.

Blue dot navigation and functionality combines with the robust mapping, navigation, and wayfinding components that AppAtlas provides for permanent structured venues.

Both indoor wayfinding app solutions are compatible with iOS and Android smartphone devices.

In Conclusion

Whether it’s navigating between meeting rooms in a short amount of time, wanting to find the hotel pool or convention center gift shop, the AppAtlas mobile platform allows guests and visitors to easily, and quickly locate and navigate where they want to be.

AppAtlas, the leading indoor navigation platform, helps venues and events alike improve visitor and attendee experiences through their location awareness app. No longer will venue visitors feel the pains of frustration when trying to navigate indoors.