Influence of Travel Apps in the Travel Industry
- These apps are highly convenient as they allow users to plan a trip in just a few taps.
- When a new app gets introduced with innovative features and appealing UI, Threads may lose the market.
- Travel apps provide instant and round-the-clock client assistance, including replies to customer inquiries.
- The app provides personalized services by fetching client-specific needs and offering custom plans to make room services flexible and joyful.
- A robust travel app cuts down on paperwork and organizes transactions using the best technologies.
What are Travel Apps and Travel App Development
Travel apps are created to facilitate travelers for planning, booking, and expense management. You need to hire mobile app developers to develop a travel application. There are various number of steps involved in building such apps. It includes different stages of travel app development, which we shall discuss in the following sections. To make the app more valuable and unique, you can add unique features that cover various aspects like travel costs, weather predictions, trip management, etc. As an entrepreneur, if you are looking forward to building a unique travel app, understand your target audience first and find out what kind of app they need for a successful trip.
How To Travel Apps Work
- Travel apps work on different principles. They offer a user-specific service.
- Different types of travel apps provide various kinds of services. For example, a custom flight booking app will offer flight booking options. The same goes for bus travel apps.
- Travel apps enhance their services by providing real-time services.
- They offer real-time information about the users to track the vehicle. All you need to do is install the app on the digital platform.
- After installing the app on their phone, consumers get portal access and other options, such as flights, transportation, lodging, etc.
- Also, travel and hospitality operators get streamlined information that can be used to target users and provide them with the freedom to book the best deals.
Monetization Models for Building Travel Apps
As an entrepreneur of a travel app startup, there are various monetization models of travel apps to earn revenue through multiple streams. Some of the most common monetization models are:
Booking commissions
In these kinds of apps, you earn money for every booking done on the travel app. The bookings can be for hotels, rental services, flights, and other accommodations. For example: Expedia and Booking.com
Subscription Models
Subscription models are apps for which users pay a specific subscription fee to access premium features, enhanced services, and exclusive deals. For example, TripIt Pro provides premium features like real-time flight alerts and itinerary customization.
Advertising and Partnerships
These apps collaborate to create advertising and promotional opportunities for doing business. They earn content from sponsored content. For example, Travel blogs and apps partnering with airlines or tourist boards.
Affiliate Marketing
Such travel apps promote third-party products or services and earn commission for each sale or lead generated through referrals. For example, they may add affiliate links to their travel platform.
In-app Purchases
Through the travel app, users can make additional purchases such as premium features, exclusive content, and travel guides. For example, They Can Purchase city guides and language translation packs.
Data Monetization
These apps use user data for further insights. They gather such data and sell it to third parties. For example, they analyze user behavior for targeted marketing or sell aggregated travel trend data.
Freemium Model
These apps provide a free version of the app with essential features and charge fees for giving premium functionalities, removing aids in the paid version. For example, providing a free travel app with basic trip planning features.
Types of Travel Apps
Different types of travel apps involve various services, such as planning, ticketing, booking, accommodation, etc.
AI-Powered Travel Apps
AI in travel apps is making a great buzz around the world. With the impact of AI technology, these travel tools, including generative AI backed up with AI-powered chatbots, have transformed travel app development services to a great extent. Apps like Travelicious, MakeMyTrip, TripAdvisor, etc., provide AI-enabled services such as travel planner, special assistance, and personalized itineraries. Such apps provide personalized travel trips.
Travel Itinerary Planning Apps
These apps help you plan the entire trip at once instead of focusing on a specific service. The app manages the entire schedule, ensuring you stay on time. For example, Wanderlog and TripIt.
Ticket booking Apps
These apps help consumers make ticket reservations, and users can book journey tickets. For example, Ixigo.
Hotel Booking Apps
It is difficult to find affordable hotels in any foreign city. With hotel booking apps, users can choose their favorite room from hundreds of rooms around the city. For example, Booking.com and Agoda. Another great option is Kayak.
Travel Insurance Apps
With such apps, users get after-loss services to enhance their trip safety, avoiding the chances of lost luggage, theft, lost passports, canceled trips, canceled hotels, medical emergencies, etc.
Top Features for Travel App Development
There are numerous features that users can use when developing a travel app. Each panel has different functionalities. Let us find the list of features:
For Customer Panel
- Login Facility
- Search Function
- Hotels Search
- Flight Booking
- Trip Details
- Reviews and Feedback
- In-App Payment
- Contact Support
- Push Notifications
- Real-time Booking
- Live Weather Updates
- Smart Voice Search
- AI-generated personalized recommendations
- AI-powered Travel Chatbots
For Admin Panel
- User management
- Agent Management
- Advertisement management
For Agent Panel
- Property management and trip packages
- Booking management
- Payment management
How To Create Travel App: Step-by-Step Process
Discovery Phase and Market Analysis
- Research the relevant market field to develop your desired application
- Know which trend is popular on various social media platforms.
- Find out which features are adopted the most and get complete knowledge about the field
- Gather all relevant data in hand to make a suitable decision.
- Use the information to conceptualize your app using
- Find the exact USP that can be any core functionality or app feature.
List Down the Features
- Research on the target audience and know what features need to be incorporated into your app.
- Decide the list of features at an early stage for your travel app development process.
- Find out what basic features, such as login and search facility, are needed and what advanced features, such as bookings or push notifications, are needed.
Hire Travel App Development Company
- Consult a reputed travel app development company that can help you cover a seamless app development journey.
- While finding a suitable app development company, check their brand reputation and customer feedback.
- Discuss your needs and expectations for the travel app and hire mobile app developers accordingly.
- Outsource your team of app developers from a reputed company for a cost-effective development process that includes UI/UX design services, choosing the tech-stack, coding, testing, product launch, and maintenance.
MVP Development
- Create a minimum viable product (MVP) for your travel mobile application at an initial stage.
- MVP development helps gather necessary inputs about the app functionality from the actual users.
- It will help make necessary changes in the app before its official launch.
- Incorporate the user feedback to ensure brand success.
Quality Assurance and App Testing
- Send your app for testing and quality assurance after MVP is approved
- QA engineers will perform exclusive compliance testing processes, including quality standardization and app testing.
- This will ensure your app is free from errors and bugs and ready to launch.
App Maintenance and Final Launch
- The last stage is to launch the app for release in the designated app store.
- To launch the app on the Google Play Store, you can hire Android app developers to build a robust mobile travel application.
Cost of Travel App Development
Developing a travel mobile application is different for different types of customers. Hence, ideally, it is impossible to finalize a price. However, with the factors below, the cost of developing your travel app can be determined considerably. The price to create a travel app will be decided by:
- The location of the travel app development company and from where you hire a dedicated team of developers.
- App features and functionality
- The time taken to develop an application
- The app's complexity, including advanced features
- The time of using the application
- The platform, iOS or Android, to build your app
- The theme type that you want to use
- Experience of your app development team.
