Planning a dream holiday with family or friends has never been easier or quicker thanks to travel applications. Digitization has revolutionized modern life. Over the past few years, the travel industry has experienced significant growth, with tourism encompassing various sectors such as travel agencies, insurance companies, hotels, and restaurants. Travel app development is now more essential than ever. Android and iOS travel apps are continually expanding, providing enhanced customer services and guidance in the travel sector. Attract customers with these app features.
How technology boosted the Travel industry
Technology, exemplified by mobile travel apps, has revolutionized the travel industry. Travel agencies now offer convenient solutions through these apps, making trip planning more accessible. With 85% of travelers using such apps, their popularity is evident. The industry’s direct GDP contribution reached USD 2,570.1 billion in 2017, projected to grow by 4.0% in 2018 and continue at 3.8% annually, reaching USD 3,890.0 billion in 2028. International tourist arrivals hit 1.3 billion in 2019, showcasing rapid growth. These figures highlight technology’s transformative impact, facilitating customer engagement, booking efficiency, and industry expansion.
If you are a startup or in the business of tours and travels, you should get your travel application development from a trusted travel app development company and to stand adrift in the industry. Notwithstanding the high competition, travel application development is an aspect of a niche for investments. This is because mobile apps are expected to generate 188.9 billion US dollars in revenue in 2020. For that, the travel apps must have high repayment potential.
Popular types of travel apps
To develop a travel app first, you need to decide what kind of app you are planning to create. Here are the types of travel apps:
- Flight Booking app: Using which the travellers compare the flight costs, book and pay for the tickets.
- Accommodation booking app: Enables the travellers to view, book and pay for the rooms. In this, the user can leave the review and rate the place they have visited. The new and innovative renting apps include the check-in feature and electronic keys.
- Travel guide App: Using which the user can receive access to local attractions, insider tips, events and sights. The user can share their experience with other users by writing their opinions and recommendations.
Why Travel apps for Travel business?
Here are some of the benefits of having a travel app for travel business
- One-stop solution for traveller and agent
- Enhance customer support
- Easy user experience
- The smooth and fast booking process
- Act as a marketing tool
- Easy to attract customers
- Smartphones are always at hand
- Real-time updates for both agents and tourists
- More client loyalty
- Build a deeper connection with clients
- Make money
- Instant availability
How to Develop a successful Travel App
The app development for a travel agency entirely relies on certain things such as including the type of app, functionalities, purpose, integrations, design requirements, etc. you can either consider hiring a professional travel app development company to develop the travel app.
Here are the necessary steps that are involved in the development of a travel app.
- Theme Design: One must choose the theme design for the travel agency app that should be compatible and best fit for the app development of your wish.
- Home Screen: The user when opens the app first thing he faces is the home screen which must say everything about your app and the features it offers.
- Menu Section: The menu will contain all the options that your app has. The menu includes options like My account, offers, book hotel or tickets, etc.
- Content Adding: Content is king, which is also an important thing to consider for a travel app. Create different categories of content, blogs, maintaining a gallery, pages, privacy terms, contact details and many more.
- Compatibility of App: You should check whether your travel app is compatible with all types of mobile screens.
Key features of Travel App development
Features are those that what makes your travel app better than all your competitors that are in the same industry. Unless you create a unique application, you need to include some or all of the following tourist app features to your app.
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User profile:
It has all the information about users like name, profile picture, birthday and travel preferences
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Search Filters:
Enables the customers to search their dream destinations quickly. Filters can be like by date, destination, transport type and accommodation for the most effective search.
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Mobile Payments:
Easy payment gateway process that is best fit for both the user and owner of the app. The payment gateway provides like Paypal, Braintree and Stripe etc.
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Navigation and maps:
The traveller can use this for navigating to the destination of his desire.
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Reviews and recommendations:
This will help the user to choose the best hotels from the reviews given by other users.
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Local Area Information:
Where you can find the local area information that the user is located and also the city transport guides in your app can help tourists get around the city quickly.
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Weather forecast:
Where you find the weather condition of the place that user want to know.
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Push Notification:
Where the user gets notification about the app updates or anything significant in the app like price changes, new tours and personalized offers.
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Special Offers:
Where the user finds the offers that the app owner provides on tours or any categories.
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Online tour package booking:
Where the user can find all the tour packages that make the user book even faster and more convenient.
- Catalogue of hotels for every tour: Where the user can find a list of hotels to choose from.
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In-app booking:
Where the user can book the hotels or cabs or flights, etc. on the go through a single app.
How to monetize the travel App?
Previously the travel apps like Expedia and Priceline charged airlines a commission for offering tickets on their platforms. But later airlines started selling their tickets on their websites. The airlines took all the customers back, and the revenue generated in this way was stopped. Most of the income comes from selling hotel reservations.
Now, travel app monetization can be done in three different ways:
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Merchant Business Model:
In this, makes an online travel agent a merchant of record where people book and pay for the services such as Hotel rooms and flight right from the agency’s mobile app. To work on this model, online agencies need to buy a large number of hotel rooms at a wholesale rate. These rooms will be sold to the users at the agency’s rate.
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Agency Business Model:
An Online Travel Agency will act as a middleman between the customers and industry operators, which makes a commission on every transaction.
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Advertising Business model:
For instance, travel applications like Kayak and Hipmunk earn their maximum income on flights and hotels by charging cost-per-click to OTA and supplier websites. So, they get paid when redirected the customers to the airline and hotel websites. this is one of the most affordable which is useful for a small travel agent who wants to make a travel app.
Even there are few more ways to monetize travel apps like in-built purchases and subscriptions. Using in-built purchases, you can sell premium features or even your travelling merchandise. Always make your users subscribe and get invaluable travelling insights, tips and life hacks using your app.
How to make money from your travel app?
Even if it is not at all the making services such as transport, tour guidance, accommodation. Using a travel app, you can still earn money from your app by following the options mentioned below:
- By providing in-app purchases through referral marketing.
- By providing paid notifications for sponsors
- Make available a paid version of the travel app
- Provide other travel service and products on your site for the commission
- Google Adsense advertising and other relevant ad placement options that are click-based advertising.
What are the reasons to develop a travel MVP app?
MVP is the one which helps a travel app development company to collect the feedback from the app users. This feedback will be used by the developers to proceed with the app development. Here are some of the benefits of developing the MVP for a travel app.
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Get Feedback:
User feedback is most essential for the app development as they provide insights into the most desired features and also solving the user issues.
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Save time:
Instead of spending too much time on developing the app that may fail to solve the user issues. It is a good idea to go with the development of MVP for a Travel agency which is used to create a highly demanded and engaging app in the short term.
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Test your business:
Using which one can test their project works in the market and gives maximum profits.
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Minimize development cost:
The development cost for MVP is very less, which is used for the initial testing.
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Attractive investors:
To attract more investor, you need something unique idea by developing MVP for a travel startup. Your business should be such promising for investors, and so there will be high chances of being noticed.
Now that you understand the MVP goals and advantages let’s come to the final point.
How much does it cost to develop a Travel App?
The cost of development of the travel app will rely on various factors that include:
- The Travel App Development company
- The Platforms – Android and iOS
- Features to include in your app
- The approximate time to launch the app
- The number of developers used for the development of a travel app.
Closing Words
All in all, we can say that the travel app is the most valuable business in this modern age and it is becoming essential for most of the tourists and travellers. If you want to be closer to your target audience and stay relevant to technologies, going mobile app is the right decision. With travel app mobile app, travellers can plan and book their trip more conveniently, so demanding for travelling apps is growing.
If you want to build a travel app, you can choose the type and adopt the best monetizing models. We recommend launching the travel app project as MVP and improve it using a continuous development approach.
We Krify technologies provide a free consultation for travel app development to your travel agency so that your travel business can grow with digital solutions and solve the problems through mobile apps. For more details, contact us.
