Expedia TripAssist puts your iPhone in touch with your reservations

by Scott Carmichael (RSS feed) on Mar 5th 2010 at 12:00PM

This week, Expedia released a renewed iPhone application designed to be a link between your phone and your Expedia reservations.

The app is called TripAssist, and it provides one-stop-shopping for anything Expedia related. Once you link the app to your Expedia account, you get instant access to current and past itineraries.

One of the cooler features inside TripAssist is the flight status tool. Not only can you set up flight status notifications, the app also displays seat maps from SeatGuru, along with information about available power ports and whether or not you can expect to be fed.

The flight notification tool sends alerts by text message or email, bypassing the (often useless) Apple push notification system.

The "shop" portion of TripAssist does not actually allow you to book trips directly inside the application - it merely links to mobile versions of Expedia pages.

All in all, a pretty solid application. The lack of in-app bookings is a tad disappointing, but the itinerary management, seat maps and flight status features really make up for this. There are of course alternatives to managing your itineraries (TripIt and TripDeck), but Expedia customers can really benefit from having everything in one place.

TripAssist is free, and is available in the App Store