Planning and making arrangements while going for a trip have been very challenging and hectic. People often go astray and end up making serious blunders. That’s why travel agencies have turned out very helpful in the past.
But! With changing times, technology has made a lot of changes to the life of people, and now mobile apps have been becoming a more handy tool to plan and arrange a holiday. Presently, different types of travel mobile apps are available that are serving the needs of travel enthusiasts.
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By 2020, mobile applications are predicted to generate 188.9 billion in revenue, and travel apps have enormous repayment potential. Owing to that, investing in mobile apps have become a major trend, and most of your entrepreneurs are striving to make a fortune by catering to the needs of travelers.
Though the question is who should create a travel mobile app and why? Let’s find the answer.
Why Should Travel & Tourism Businesses Create An App?
The biggest question is who should invest in travel mobile apps. While the Covid-19 situation is getting worse in some parts of the countries, travel has become a very expensive and essential commodity.
Moreover, the travel & tourism business is facing safer options of travel. So, it is time that travel & tourism businesses establish a faster communication platform where clients can not just enter their needs, but you can cater them desired services.
Besides, here are some statistics that indicate an upsurge in travel mobile app usage in the future.
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- By 2023, more than 700 million people will make hotel booking online.
- 70% of travel enthusiasts research travel on their smartphone.
- 72% of mobile bookings take place within 48 hours of last-minute Google searches.
- In 2018, 82% of all travel bookings took place online via a mobile app or website.
So, don’t you think it is the right time to develop a travel app or website?
Do you want to create a travel mobile application but having thousands of questions? Don’t take the stress! In this article, we will untangle the concept of travel app development and learn how to create a travel mobile app.
Different Travel Mobile App Ideas You Can Pick Up In 2021
Before you get into coding and development stuff, you need to decide what type of application you are going to cater to your users. Actually, depending on the need of users, there are many travel app ideas in the market that enable users to do peculiar things.
Before you create an app, you need to decide what type of application you want to develop. Let’s take a glance at all travel app ideas.
Accommodation/Hotel Booking App
This app category enables travelers to view, book, and pay for accommodation in different cities, countries, and areas. The platform enlists all hotel and accommodation properties available in the location the user is searching shows an inside view of rooms, prices, and cheapest room options available, and other details.
Moreover, users can also review the hotel after visiting the place. Presently, most innovative accommodation booking apps have check-in features, electronic keys, and more.
To understand more, let’s contemplate the features of Marriott’s hotel app.
The app has a built-in check-in feature that users can use before entering the hotel. Moreover, the app provides users with an electronic key to open the hotel room. Isn’t it exciting, and there is no hassle to wait for check-in.
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Booking.com API, Zumata API, Airbnb API are the major APIs you can use to infuse accommodation booking features in your travel mobile app. If you hire app developers, they help you pick the best APIs to infuse and leverage the best services.
Flight Booking App
The app range enables travelers to compare flight costs, book, and pay for tickets.
Hopper is a renowned flight booking application. Let’s understand its main features to break down the aspect for consideration.
Hopper has price prediction algorithms that help users in purchasing plane tickets and book accommodation at the lowest prices. This algorithm empowers the app to inform users about the lowest ticket prices in the notification.
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Moreover, Hopper users receive personalized recommendations for flight booking depending on the history of their previous vacation, budget, and more.
Now, let’s take a glance at APIs you can integrate within your travel mobile app to facilitate real-time flight data and enable faster ticket booking.
- Travel Fusion Flight API
- QPX Express API
- Cleartrip Flights API
Moreover, if you want to ensure secured in-app payment, you can infuse :
- Stripe
- PayPal
- Google Wallet
- Apple Pay
If you are engaged in the flight booking business already, then serving your clients with a ticket booking app can boost your revenue generation. So, think wisely while investing.
Transport apps
It is a very complex but most admired travel mobile app idea that allows users to access/receive local transportation information and routes. The application incorporates a geo-location feature that fetches users’ location and suggests options of transportation available in the vicinity.
Citymapper is the finest example of such a travel mobile app available. This app offers users the routes with official data retrieved from local transport companies.
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Moreover, users can enter the names of places, landmarks, roads, postcodes, and the app will show all transportation options, including cycle, uber, public transport, or walk.
If you want to create such an application, you can include a taxi booking feature by integrating APIs of Uber, FlightStats, Lyft, Taxify, Gett, and more.
Travel Guide Mobile App
It is always difficult to find places of attraction in an unknown city, and that’s where travel guide apps come into the picture. It lets users access all location attractions, events, and sights. Moreover, the users can also leave a review after visiting the place.
You can also provide more value to users by including ticket booking for some events, offline maps, currency converters, text-to-speech features.
Triposo is a fine example of an offline travel app guide.
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So let’s take a closer look at Triposo, an offline travel app guide that provides users with a personal recommendation for sight, nightlife, and places to dine & sleep. It also has phrasebooks, currency converts, and features for text-to-speech.
So, these are major travel app ideas. However, if you have a big plan and billions of dollars, then infusing AR/VR to provide a virtual tour of locations while sitting at home can turn out a futuristic and incredible travel app idea.
But! If you are already engaged in the travel business, creating a niche-oriented app would be most fruitful unless you have big plans with an enormously big pocket.
Now, when you have decided what type of travel app you want to create, it is time to understand the science of travel application development.
How to Develop a Mind-blowing Travel Mobile App?
Developing an app isn’t just coding and testing; there is a lot more than you have to do before you engage yourself in work to hire travel app developers. Understanding your customers, target audience, and their likes/dislikes are major pointers that help you set up a journey of both success or failure.
So, your travel mobile app development endeavor must include the following steps:
- Decoding Users’ Need & Interest
While you are going to develop an application that can suffice the need of travelers or people, it’s crucial to understand who wants to travel to which destinations. But! The fact is everyone on earth travels at least once.
So, you need to do in-depth research to understand who your customers are? How much do they spend on travel? What are your favorite tourist spots? Their interest and what they like to do while traveling.
The better you would know about them, the more value you would be able to provide your clients.
- Competitor Research
The market research gives a new direction to your endeavor. Thus, a peer travel software development company would always advise you to do user and market research and would like to understand your competitors.
The travel industry is currently very competitive today, but the good news is that you can get access to the resources and databases of the biggest players. A number of APIs are available that you can use in your app, such as Booking.com API, to integrate booking features into your app.
- Outline Travel App MVP Features
Enlist all features that you want to infuse in the app to give both developer and company exact idea of development such as users account, in-app payment, search & filters, geo-location access, and more,
Moreover, decide what type of application you want to create, viz: Android app, iOS app, or hybrid app.
- Hire Developers With Expertise In Travel App Development
When it comes to development, you can either outsource the project to the best travel app development company or hire developers. Having an in-house team can be problematic if you have no know-how of technology and app development.
So, pick a top company or hire expert developers with relevant experience. Once you hire them, collaborate and build a user-friendly app by creating an opulent UX/UI app design.
How Much Does It Cost to Develop A Travel App?
The cost of development bears a number of aspects, most importantly your app idea. The app idea you pick would define most of the cost and then the hourly price of developers, technologies, and time.
The following diagram shows how cost can vary for the development of an app.
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Wrapping Up
Developing a travel mobile app isn’t a tough task; the tough is creating an alluring & enticing app solution that can satisfy the needs of tech-savvy travelers.
Since the expectations of app users are increasing, Millenials have their own areas of interest. You would have to develop a solution that can make travelers of every age spend time on your app. So, carry out an innovative travel app development to win the market.
Anvi Lewis is an ed-tech enthusiast with a passion for writing on emerging technologies in the areas of web development and Software development services. She is an expert in learning management system & software development technologies – currently associated with Valuecoders.
App stock photo by idea Ink Design/Shutterstock
