Upside Introduces New App for iPhone, Exclusively Available on the App Store

WASHINGTON, April 26, 2017 /PRNewswire/ -- Today, with the launch of the Upside app, business travelers in small to medium-sized companies who make their own travel arrangements can buy their business travel on their iPhone in five minutes or less.

Upside is known for providing the lowest travel prices on the internet, packaging flights and hotel together in one low price, saving the company money, and rewarding employees for doing so with personal rewards on major retailer gift cards (customers also get all their frequent flyer miles and credit card points). Upside does all the hard work for the business traveler: sorting through tens of thousands of itinerary options to present the 6 best options for business-quality flights and the 6 best options for hotels on every trip. For the first time, with Upside, employees are excited to save money for their companies, because the more they save on their business travel, the more gift card rewards they receive.

Upside is the business travel service that changes how travelers shop, save and get rewarded for buying business travel. Now, with the release of the Upside app, the most efficient internet travel shopping experience got even faster.

The Upside app for iPhone is available for free in the App Store and was featured in "New Apps We Love" on release.

"For nearly 20 years, shopping for business flights and hotels online has been time-consuming and frustrating," said Upside Founder and CEO Jay Walker. "It could take hours to shop, hunt and compare; and after all that work, customers from small and medium-sized businesses still weren't sure they got the best price.

"Upside changed all that, and with our new app we double down on our promise to make buying business travel fast," Walker continued. "And Apple Pay makes it better still – even easier and faster. Now customers can shop and buy a package of business-quality flights and hotels with their phone in one hand, using one thumb, in five minutes flat."

Apple Pay and the Upside App

Apple Pay's easy, one-touch, secure payment process enhances the best business travel buying experience on the internet.

Sean Soper, Upside's Lead iOS Engineer, says, "Upside's app is the kind of collaboration between engineers and developers that creates a great product – in Upside's case, a tool that helps business customers succeed. Using Apple tools such as Swift 3 and MapKit, the Upside app is a fast and sleek user experience. With the Upside app, the business traveler's phone is now a powerful personal travel buying engine."

The new Upside iPhone app is designed in a streamlined fashion that enables customers to see, select and buy business-quality flights and hotels in just a few screens. Hoby Albright, Upside's Director of Product Design, added, "Using Apple best practices, we made the design clean and spare – incorporated high resolution images, navigation in the thumb zone -- and focused on the information business travelers need, so they can easily navigate with one thumb and don't have to sift through a bunch of design layers to buy their travel."

 The Upside app for iPhone enables customers to:

• Purchase Trips.
• View Trip History and Frequent Flyer Miles.
• Select Gift Cards and View Gift Card Account & History.
• Easily Contact Upside's 24/7 Live Customer Service Representatives.

Upside's Big Data software does all the work for the customer – pre-processing 1 billion flight records and 500 million hotel records daily.

Walker concluded: "Upside represents the first unique buying idea for business travel in 15 years. For the first time, business travelers from smaller and mid-sized companies can get discounts that were previously only available to the big guys –and they finally get the service they need and deserve."

About Upside.com

Upside serves the annual $165 billion segment of business travelers who work for small and mid-sized companies.  These companies don't qualify for volume discounts or special deals from travel suppliers and can't get the kind of customer service they need.  Upside uses new thinking and new technology to simplify the buying process, and provide 24/7 live, human customer service.

Upside's business model is unique – travelers typically get $100-$200 in free gift cards for buying their flights and hotel together for a single price. This packaging allows Upside to obtain private discounts from suppliers.  And, when travelers voluntarily substitute less expensive but equally effective travel options, they get even bigger savings and a bigger gift card reward. Gift cards can be used at more than 50 national retailers including Amazon.com, Whole Foods, Target, Nike, and The Home Depot.

Upside was created and launched by Priceline Founder Jay Walker and a team of travel industry innovation pioneers, including several members of Priceline's founding team.  With Upside, the days are over when business travelers from small and mid-sized companies have to spend more and settle for less than leisure or big-company travelers.  Upside is the better way to buy business travel when the customer is booking it themselves. 

For more information, visit: upside.com or follow us on LinkedIn, Twitter and Facebook.

Media Contact: Steve Hofman
[email protected] 
202-741-0242

SOURCE Upside