Building a Happy Hour "app" for the Strip - input appreciated

I use "app" in quotation marks because I don't have the resources right now to develop a native app. What I'm building is a mobile site that focuses specifically on Strip hotels and casinos, and the happy hours that they offer. My goal is for a user to be able to pull up the site, select the casino they're near (or are interested in), and see all the restaurants and bars within that property that offer happy hour specials. I currently have the navigation organized like so:

Home>Casino>List of Bars


The casino page contains a list of bars/restaurants and each bar/restaurant contains the following:

Name
Type of Cuisine (if restaurant)
Location within casino property (not address, but more like "casino level, next to lobby")
Actual hours for happy hour
Days of the week the happy hour is available
Specials details (if offered - "$5 cocktails, $7 appetizers, etc")
Menu link (if available)



My question to you: what other information do you think is crucial to reach the goal? Keep in mind, the specific goal is to be able to find out which happy hours are available at a particular hotel/casino. It's not meant to be everything to everyone, it's meant to accomplish a certain task.

This started out as a spreadsheet because I'm a dork and that's how I plan my vacations. I shared the info with my boyfriend and he suggested that this would be a great app. I have found that the Happy Hours app by Go Time isn't really what I'm looking for, so this is an easier way to access my spreadsheet data while on the road.

Any and all feedback is appreciated. Once I have it a bit more fleshed out, I'd love to get some beta testers playing around with it.

Thanks in advance!

 

I can't begin to tell you how many times I've wished for this exact thing. Seriously. I think you've got a good coverage of categories. I would suggest adding what drink or app that particular place is known for if applicable. Kind of like how people say try the lemondrop martini or peach bellini at Bellagio.

 

If you're going to have a list of all the specials in a particular casino broken down by bar name, some sort of icons for food, beer, and liquor specials (icon for each) would make it easy to scroll through quickly and see who is offering what.

 

Great idea. I would add a map menu if possible, so that one could visually see what is near them. Helpful for noobs who may not realize which casinos are near them.

Also, maybe a filter so one could look just for beer specials, or appetizers, etc.

 

Thanks! This is great feedback. Keep it coming!

 

Perhaps have a function that shows "Happy Hours that are on now" or "near here".

Also list noteworthy all-day specials.

You could be fancy and display a countdown timer so if you are in a bar at Happy Hour you know how long to go, maybe with some sort of alarm with 5mins to go.

As others have said, a filter for beer/cocktails/food would be useful.

 

I would add some links and information for a user to verify or not that the information is accurate. Maybe a "last verified" date and a button for a user to confirm specials still available and another to report that the info isn't up to date. They key is to ensure your data is accurate and kept updated and the user is confident that it is correct.

 

Indeed. Your biggest problem is making sure the app is up-to-date, and confirming that people's reports of changes are correct (especially when they are likely to have had a drink or 2).

My friend runs an app that lists dates of motor races, and a couple of people have left 1-star reviews when a date has changed without him noticing rather than just contact him with a correction (as most user do).

 

Something like this would be great. I have spent hours researching different sites to find out happy hour specials for my next trip. Thought I had most of them only to see a FB status from Mirage yesterday about a 241 at the Lobby Bar from 1-3 that I hadn't seen anywhere. So to be able to have a simple tool would be so appreciated. What would make it perfect If there was a "you are here" icon and then current, close happy hours with a different icons highlighted, obviously all in a map style.

What gets me is knowing certain hotels have specials, but realizing they don't advertise them. For example, Cosmo has "social hour" specials on their website, but I know of some specials that aren't on there and would never know about them if I didn't read someone's trip report. Why have them if you don't tell people? I'm not on many social media sites, but maybe I should be since some of these specials are on Twitter, Four Square etc. I'm all about finding the best deal and knowing what my options are.

I look forward to this application

 

Yeah, keeping the information accurate is always a challenge. That's another reason I'm focused on Strip-only hotels. Much smaller data set.

I work for a web development company and we built an app for nationwide wine touring a couple years ago. It was great until we realized it was almost impossible to keep the information for 4,000+ wineries updated.

 

maybe something like the Gas Buddy app, it tells you when the last person updated the price at the gas pump.

Also, I seek out buck a shuck oyster specials, so it would be great to be able to use "Oysters" as a search term. Sometimes I'll go $1.50.

Big time gripe for me. I realize that the owners may want to reward loyal customers who follow on Facebook, but if they are having $1 Kumamoto Oysters and $4 Ballast Point Grapefruit Sculpin and I'm in Philly, it does neither one of us any good. Except cause envy for me.

Yes, I exchanged emails with someone at Go Time, they had missed so many happy hours in Atlantic City, I think these folks were sponsored by Ruby Tuesday. Very difficult to keep the information updated, like herding cats.

 

Super idea! Of course the accountant in me is thinking of ways to monetize the idea

 

Perhaps I can offer some advice as well. I actually created a Vegas app that was very similar. The biggest problem we ran into is the happy hours come and go more frequently then you think. It's a lot of research and input time just to keep them current. You might consider way to have visitors update it as they discover one or like hammie suggested, have visitors validate that it is still active. I will warn you though that getting user engagement while people are in Vegas is very difficult. Feel free to send me a note if you want to pick my brain. We've created two Vegas app now.

Steve

 

If you ever get the capacity to turn it into an actual "app", one incredibly useful feature would be if you can integrate it with a smartphone's location services. That way you could not only let a user browse by casino, but have a feature like, "Show me the happy hours near where I am". Obviously that's way, way beyond my technical expertise, but I'm pretty sure it would be theoretically feasible. I know it's just a mobile site for now, but you might want to collect data in a way that would make it easier to eventually implement such a feature down the road.

 

Not sure if this helps, but Eater Vegas tries to keep a list with map. Looks like they only update annually.

http://www.eater.com/forums/las-vegas/2015/7/17/8995105/whats-your-go-to-happy-hour-in-las-vegas

 

This is a great idea. I'm in IT so I know the challenges. A big one of course is keeping the data current. If Eater Vegas updates annually it's useless. Also a good idea to do the mobile site first and perhaps do an app down the road. If you ever do decide to do an app version you can make it location based and bring up the nearest happy hours based on the time and location of the user.

Personally, I would use this site/app a lot so I hope you can make it happen.

 

I'm delighted by the feedback and heartened by the support. I agree that location based services would be awesome. At this point, I think the best I could do would be including the hotel address and then it would be up to the use to open it in a maps app. It would be a MUST if I ever turn it into a real app.

Someone suggested icons for the types of specials available. Do you think these are reasonably self-explanatory? I'm thinking the beer icon could be a little better. I'm not a designer so I'm doing the best I can with free icons.

 

I agree, while location based is nice it's not like the strip is an unfamiliar place. Just being able to click on a casino and see the bars/happy hours of that casino would be fantastic. This is something my girlfriend and I try to research before each trip and it's time consuming. Some happy hour deals for drinks and/or apps are pretty good.

 

I tried to start a separate thread since the site is now live, but it looks like it was deleted. I messages Sonya to ask why but haven't received a response. Hopefully I'm not breaking any rules.

The site is now live at vegashappyhours.net and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have. I'm working on some technical hiccups, but I'm just wondering if anything jumps out at you in terms of missing info. Did I miss an obvious happy hour?

 

Make it android friendly. One of the best Vegas apps completely snubs Android users. A-holes.