These days you will find an app for almost every purpose. Thus, travel app development has also become a big industry in the traveling industry and consumers. In fact, according to Travelport Digital, around 80% of travellers and tourists used a mobile app to plan their trips in 2018. This shows the greatness of lucrative opportunities in travel app development company and why businesses hire travel app developers. In this blog, we will learn how to develop an app for the travel business.

Before we begin we should take a closer in the travel app industry 

Travel App Industry Overview

• The international online travel market is estimated to have a value of $354.2 billion in 2020
• It is estimated that by 2031, this value will reach a whopping $1,835.6 billion 
• The age group of 32-43 covers the maximum market share of 33.6% in 2020 
• Asia-Pacific is the most lucrative online travel market
• In 2021, Booking.com was the most widely used travel app in the world 
• According to Travelport Digital, around 80% of tourists and travellers rely on a smartphone app to plan their trips 
• According to Travelport Digital, around 77% of tourists and travellers rely on a mobile app for payments or booking a flight or hotel 

The Impact of COVID-19 on the Travel Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic brought massive challenges to every industry. However, travel and tourism saw the biggest impact of the lockdown norms and virus threats around the world. In fact, for some countries, the tourism industry represents over 20% of their GDP. Travel businesses saw billion-dollar losses throughout 2020. However, things started to improve by the beginning of 2021 with lockdown norms getting lenient. Many travel businesses started to invest heavily in travel app development companies to recapture the market. This also gave to individuals who lost their jobs during the pandemic era.

What is a Travel App? 

Travel apps are mobile applications that enable users to plan their trips, research destinations, discover and book flights & accommodations, and take advantage of deals & offers. Booking.com, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor are some best examples of travel apps. Furthermore, these apps make travelling a lot more convenient, informative, and easier. For this reason, many businesses are investing heavily in travel app development companies and are on the verge to hire travel app developers. 

Reasons to Develop a Travel App

There are a number of things that users have to think and figure out while travelling. Accordingly, a travel app can fulfil various purposes such as hotel booking, location research, itinerary management, and more. As a travelling business, you can hire a travel app development company for custom travel app development. These are some reasons that will convenience you to start investing in travel app development; 

1. Superior Customer Support

In today’s digital age, customers are often reliant on smooth digital services from their smartphones. They don’t have to get stuck between the interactions with a business representative when everything can be done from a mobile app. Thus, travel app development can help you ensure superior customer support and experience. 

By building a mobile app, you can provide services such as online ticket booking, hotel reservations, itinerary management, transportation guides, and a lot more. Ultimately, this convenience and ease of services help you win the trust and loyalty of your customers. 

2. Less Paperwork 

No one likes paperwork especially when they want to spend their leisure time. Thus, when you develop travel apps, you can drastically reduce the paperwork by digitalizing the entire process. In fact, everything from booking tickets and managing documents can be done from the travel app itself. For any travel company, this could be the best selling point to attract more customers and ease their travelling experience. 

3. Scope of Better Customer Engagement 

We all know the impact of digital marketing in the advertising industry. In fact, it has opened new horizons for many businesses around the world. By investing in travel app development, you can engage more customers with your constant deals and offers digitally. Thus, it is possible to increase your conversion rate when you have the right travel app development company on your side. Their guidance can help you select the features of travel app to ensure maximum engagement. 

4. Provide Personalized Services 

It becomes a very daunting task to provide personalized services if you are operating your travelling business offline. When you develop travel apps, it becomes a lot easier to personalize the service by learning from user preferences and habits. In fact, by collecting user data, you can understand the specific needs and preferences of each user. As a result, you will be able to fulfil their personal preferences and demand with fully personalized services. This could be a great contributing factor to your business growth and customer base.  

5. Improvement in Customer Loyalty

You have to understand that a mobile application is a digital asset that can be stored on a user’s device. This is a great opportunity for branding, market presence, and customer loyalty. In fact, a travel app has more impact than a simple travel website. When you invest in custom travel app development, you are able to provide a top-notch app experience to your customers. 

By incorporating the best design and cutting-edge technologies, you can leave a better impression on their minds. Ultimately, the users love to keep such innovative apps and help you in establishing customer loyalty. 

6. Attract New Investors 

Today’s investors are very interested in advanced technologies and digital solutions. They see more potential in a business that embraces digital transformation than a business that doesn’t. Therefore, by investing in travel app development, you can attract more potential investors to your travelling business. Hire travel app developers to develop an MVP of your app and start gathering more funds for your business. 

How to Monetize Your Travel App?

When you are investing in travel app development, you also expect to ensure an income source for your business. Let’s learn how you can earn money from your travel app;

The image clearly shows that the majority of the travel apps are free. However, the app owners always have a smart strategy to monetize the app and earn even better.

Four Popular Monetization Models:

• In-App Advertising 

This is the most popular and successful monetization model. Here, the travel business starts to display ads on the app screens. The app advertisers pay depends on the popularity and user base of the app. However, you have to be very careful while placing ads and avoid annoying the users. 

• Commission 

This is a great monetization model for travel businesses that want to earn commission from every booking or payment made through their app. 

• Paid App 

In this monetization model, the users have to pay an upfront cost to download the mobile app. Furthermore, you can also launch a basic version with some core features, while the users have to pay for the pro version. 

• In-App Purchases 

This is another very successful monetization model for travel apps. Here, you can provide core services without any charges. However, additional travel services can be accessed through in-app purchases. 

Travel App Development Process 

Now that we have learned about the market, benefits, and monetization methods, it’s time to learn about the complete travel app development process. However, before we start, we need to learn some that you have to consider to ensure effective mobile app development. 

– Users and Their Needs 

You might be very curious to develop travel apps as soon as possible. However, you have to understand the key audience who will be the actual users of your app. You need to understand their demographics and their needs for such a digital solution in the first place. Thus, anticipating your audience, you will be able to provide a better value proposition. Ask these questions to yourself; 

• Who are your clients? 
• How much they are willing to spend? 
• What type of destinations do they like to explore?
• What are their exact requirements? 
• Will they embrace digital innovation?  

Study the Competitor

The market is already stiff with a lot of competitors in the travel industry. Thus, you have to provide a unique and valuable solution to the users in order to capture the market. Moreover, learning about your competitors will help you find the gaps in the market. 

Choosing the Right Development Team 

Developing the travel app on your own becomes out of the equation if you don’t have any prior experience in mobile app development. When you collaborate with a travel app development company and hire travel app developers, you gain access to the best talent and latest technologies. 

Together, they help you define your ideas according to the market trends and finalize the project milestones. MobileCoderz is a leading mobile app development company that always ensures the smoothest travel app development process. 

Let’s discuss some of the core features of a Travel App

Core Features of a Travel App

If you want to develop a successful travel app, then you must include the following core features;

1. Easy Sign-up/profile management 
2. Searching Functionality 
3. Listings 
4. Chat with Agents and Hosts 
5. Booking 
6. Reviews 
7. Notifications 

• Easy Sign-up/Profile Management 

The signup process is a very important feature of a travel app. In fact, it should be very smooth and easy to minimize bounce rates. The process should be simple and very convenient for the users. Furthermore, including social login is also a good choice during the travel app development process. Your aim should be all about making the signup process faster and making the user experience better. 

• Searching Functionality 

Any user loves to have a robust searching functionality to find hotels, flights, destinations, food, and more. In fact, they might just open the app and start searching for keywords instead of browsing the entire app. Thus, you should consider adding complex search filters in your app to provide the most precise results to the users. 

• Listings 

Your travel app will be having a lot of listings for hotels, flights, locations, and more. However, you must provide additional information about the place through pictures, booking availability status, descriptions, reviews, and policies. These detailed listings will help the customers make better-informed decisions.  

• Chat with Agents and Hosts 

Traditional modes of direct communication between users and business representatives have gone obsolete. You should enable digital communication with a chat option in your travel app. In fact, it could reduce a lot of operating costs and increase customer retention. A plain chatbox is sufficient to ensure smooth communication. 

• Booking 

It is much more convenient when the users can directly book tickets, hotels, tours, and other services directly from the app. In fact, you must implement the booking feature into your travel app to ensure more revenue generation and customer engagement. 

• Reviews 

Including reviews is a great way to help travellers make intelligent decisions. It builds genuine confidence and trust in businesses. Thus, you must include it during the mobile app development process to create a better travel ecosystem. 

• Notifications

Everyone wants to stay notified about the latest updates, offers, deals, and reminders. Thus, you must implement push notifications in the features of travel app. It will help your users to learn about new offers, price changes, reminders, and more. 

Steps to Develop a Travel App

1. Research and Analysis 

Before you get into the technical aspects of the travel app development process, you must clear out a few things. First, you must have a clear strategy to transform your idea into a successful mobile application. Second, the objectives of your app should be very clear from the beginning. Lastly, you must know when exactly the users will be using your app.

Once you have understood the use cases and purpose, you must have a clear roadmap for your travel app. Furthermore, you can also create an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) first if you are running on a budget or not sure about the idea. Then, you have select the platform and technology stack for your app.

You can either build a native app that provides the best performance and experience. However, it will increase the cost to build a travel app and consume more time to develop native apps. You can also develop hybrid or cross-platform apps to increase the pace of your development. However, they might not provide the performance and experience like native apps.

Developing a Minimum Viable Product is a sensible option to experience the bare-minimum set of features. These are some steps to launch an MVP to the market; 

• During the initial testing, you have to create an app with basic features 
• Then you can release the MVP into the market 
• Find out whether your MVP has the potential to succeed 

Why You Should Develop an MVP?

• You are able to minimize the cost to build a travel app 
• Test your project with minimum functionalities 
• Get feedback from the initial testers 
• Save your time from doing unnecessary things 
• Attract investors by showing the first version of the app 

2. Building the UI/UX of the Travel App 

The design and user experience play a crucial role in custom travel app development. Therefore, your travel app’s design should be user-friendly, interactive, engaging, and minimalist. 

– Working on the Workflows & Architecture 

In order to define a workflow, you have to determine how the information will be shown to the users. Thus, this means creating complete user journeys on your travel app. Plus, you have to define the various roles, app’s information architecture, and privileges. 

– Working on wire-frames

Wireframes are like digital blueprints of your travel app. They help you understand the features of travel apps and their implementation. A trustworthy travel app development company considers it a cost-effective measure to understand the layouts and user experience. However, you have to be very careful while working on device-specific designs.

– Working on Prototypes 

Prototypes give us the perfect representation of clickable visual interfaces and simulation of user experience. Plus, they will also give you an insight into the travel app’s workflow. It might be a time-consuming task but works as the initial testing of the app. 

3. The App Development Stage 

This is the core development stage of the travel app development process. When you hire travel app developers, they will work on the front-end, API, and server-side of the application. In fact, all of the chosen features of travel app are implemented in this process. 

They begin by working on the back-end part that works as the backbone of the app. Then, they implement additional APIs depending on the requirements. These APIs work as a communication tunnel between the app and backend technologies. Accordingly, they have to work on the front-end side of the application. This part is responsible for providing an interactive user experience to the users. 

4. QA Testing 

The travel app development process is not done even after building the app. There could be some bugs, glitches, errors, or crashes even after smooth development. Thus, the QA testing process is also important to ensure that the travel is stable, secure, and reliable. You have to create different test cases in your custom travel app development approach.

You must hire travel app developers to maintain the quality of the app. They are the right professionals to help you with user experience testing, functional testing, performance testing, security testing, and device and platform testing. In fact, a strict and rigorous testing protocol helps your mobile app excel in every aspect. 

5. End-to-End Deployment

The mobile app development process completes only after deploying the app on respective app stores successfully. To ensure smooth deployment, you have to ensure a lot of rules and guidelines of both the Play Store and App Store. When you want to develop travel apps, it becomes important to hire travel app developers. They will be helping you out in maintaining a checklist during travel app development. Ultimately, you will be able to ensure a smooth development process.

They will provide you with complete guidance to create on both App Store and Play Store to deploy your app. During the submission of your mobile app, you have to add the following details in the app metadata; 

• Title of the app 
• Description 
• Category 
• Keywords 
• App Icon 
• In-App Screenshots 

Team Required for Travel App Development 

When you hire travel app developers from a leading travel app development company, you will need the right talent pool for the job. These professionals will help you with different app complexity, chosen technology, development style, etc; 

• Project Manager 
• UI/UX Designers 
• iOS & Android Developers 
• Backend Developers 
• Quality Assurance Engineer 

Cost to Build a Travel App

The total cost of travel app development may depend on various factors. Thus, it is very hard to give an accurate estimate of the travel app development cost. However, still, you can estimate an average of $25,000 to $50,000 to develop a travel app. 

Factors that Determine Cost to Build a Travel App 

• App complexity 
• Type of mobile app 
• Features of the travel app 
• API integrations 
• The Developers 

Developing a travel app can take a significant amount of time depending on the features and complexity. However, a travel app development that follows an Agile development approach can greatly streamline the development process. Plus, talented professionals with years of experience in mobile app development can also improve the quality and speed of the travel app development process. A simple level travelling app can take around 2 months to finish.

Summing Up

Travel app development has become significantly important for businesses in the digital age. These apps have become essential tools for users looking for travel convenience and instant booking facilities. Therefore, there’s a constant demand for travel apps in the market. If you are also thinking about developing a travel app with high-quality mobile app development, then MobileCoderz could be the best choice. We are a leading travel app development company that provides custom travel app development services to users. Contact us today and hire travel app developers to build a travel app with high-performance, security, stunning design, and reliability.