Tourism Tropical North Queensland's smart phone app has received a luke warm reception from businesses in the region, but drawn heated criticism from one app developer.

Local developer Chris Dahlberg was blunt in his assessment of the tourism body's application, designed to inform visitors of the products available in the region, describing it as "a load of crap".

"This town (Port Douglas) is an important tourist part of the whole of Tropical North Queensland, it's one of the premium spots," Mr Dahlberg said.

"It has 60 restaurants of which probably 25 would be as good as any in Sydney or Melbourne. It really is a fabulous place, we all know that.

"So they (TTNQ) sign up two restaurants for Port Douglas, they don't put anything else in there.

"You go right through the thing and it's just absolute rubbish."

Mr Dahlberg said the TTNQ app will be popular thanks to the backing of businesses such as the Cairns Post and Cairns Airport, as well as other marketing throughout the city and on related websites.

"It's going to get a lot of impact. If the thing was good, that'd be great, but it's not any good and it's going to end up giving people stuff that they don't want anyway."

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TTNQ's David Inches acknowledged that, while the launch of their app to the general public is to take place today, there is still work to be done in attracting businesses to sign up.

"We've had nearly 100 members sign up to be part of the application," he said. "It's open to any business who is part of a tourism membership organisation.

"We're looking for a larger response from the Port Douglas and Daintree region than we've got.

"It's a new technology so it takes businesses a while to realise how it can benefit their businesses."

Mr Inches said TTNQ will be making another pitch to our region's businesses in the near future and that conducting face to face presentations have resulted in an 80% take up.

Mr Dahlberg has developed the 'Port Douglas and Daintree Discovery Guide' app that the consumer can purchase for $2.99 while listings are free for businesses.

"It saves all those tour operators that got hammered through the off season having to put their hand in to get $400 out to get the app produced.

"Frankly, people are going off free apps. They're prepared to spend $2.99 to get something that's a bit of quality."

Mr Dahlberg said there was no way for visitors to get independent information on the region's products with tourism bodies servicing their members and tour shops selling their preferred products.

The TTNQ app is free to the user, but businesses pay $250 to be listed, a deliberate pricing structure according to Mr Inches.

"It's a different business model to Chris'. We don't want the customers to pay for it so because we don't have the funds to run it on our own we have to generate funds from the membership."

The tourism body's 'tripwolf' app was presented to businesses late last year with some controversy after the locally owned 'iTours' company had already pitched a similar facility.

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