How to build a travel mobile app in UAE? How to find the best great travel app developers? What are the critical travel apps development tips?
If you are seeking answers to the above questions, then you have come to the right place.
In this all-inclusive guide, we are going to explain to you everything related to the travel app development.
I remember the times when arranging your trip was a challenge only for the brave. For the remaining people, there were travel agencies/travel agent apps.
With the rise of technology, the world has become smaller and reachable. However, now the situation has changed with the help of top traveling apps/top guide apps; the journey itself no longer such a big deal.
With the advancement of technology, most of the travelers are depending on mobile phones rather than before. According to the research report, 80% of travelers used a mobile app to research trips in 2018.
Around 87% of travelers have the same good travel apps or traveling guide apps on their smartphones in 2019.
FuGenX technologies have published multiple blogs on the Travel industry. Just have a look at them for a better understanding of the concepts.
- Impact of Blockchain technology in the travel industry
- Top travel apps for smooth traveling in Dubai
- Logistics app development technologies.
So travel app development is a perspective niche to bring investments in; But if you want to build a big-time travel app, you need to carefully choose the business models & features and decide on the budget.
If you are starting your own app for travel, you need to pick its type, choose your business model, and estimate the MVP cost.
That is where the app solutions come in.
In this guide, we highlight every facet of how to build an app for travel
Let us start our journey.
Are you scheduling to build your own house app? Contact our expert team.
Why travel mobile app development is an immense business opportunity
You may ask, what does it have to do with mobile apps?
It has everything to do with mobile applications.
85% of travelers use mobile gadgets to book travel activities.
Yes, you heard it right. Mobile devices are the new revenue-generating platform in the travel industry.
Those marketers/organizations who manage to exploit this opportunity successfully will stay survive & competitive.
Smartphones- that is where travelers’ attention lies. If you want to seize the attention of the users to your brand, your organization must be present on mobile devices.
Travelers use these time travel apps to plan their trips, booking tickets, book hotels, and many more that generate income, not mentioning the advertising, which they see.
Booking.com, Airbnb, MakeMyTrip, TripAdvisor, and many other travel apps are an example of authoritative revenue sources. These examples show that it is likely to build successful and popular traveling apps for Android/IOS if done correctly and diligently.
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- The benefits of going mobile
There are many benefits to building an app rather than engaging the customers for your agency and your customers.
Reduce agency service costs
Increases revenue
Reduces traveler friction
Stay within policy
Increases travel agency’s brand presence
Attracting new customers
Keep travelers engaged post-booking
Why use apps when traveling?
- Explore the destination
It is always exciting to have a glimpse of where you are heading before you get there. Most of the best travel apps offer real-time images of travel destinations with reviews & ratings.
This information will give ample time to plan accordingly & customize your trip in line with reviews & ratings from fellow customers.
- Ease of payment
Various payment apps allow customers to complete transactions smoothly. The apps offer a one-stop approach to the book and manage without worrying about the manual paperwork.
- Automation
Most of the apps provide information instantly by which users can get any information they need without any hassle. Along with it, it automates different operations like searching, booking, billing saves and invoicing save a lot of time and money.
- Amazing discounts & incentives
With the more number of mobile apps in the market, you can expect some fantastic rebates & incentives when using travel apps to do your transactions.
The discounts offered on hotel booking, air ticket bookings, and complimentary services.
How do travel apps make revenue?
The point is clear that most of the applications uploaded to the app marketplaces (Google play store or Apple store) are supposed to be free. However, as time moves on, its owners are applying different app revenue models to make a profit.
Below you can find different app revenue models that you can apply for the proposed new travel app/city guide app.
- Advertising
Advertising is the most prominent and affordable one that works best for small agents who want to build a travel app.
You can directly sell advertising space to firms in the relevant industry. Alternatively, you can show relevant ads such as airline ads, hotels, and many more. In simple words, the companies are paid for redirecting customers to third-party websites.
Listing to third party websites does not increase the bookings number. Nevertheless, a hotel ranked in the last can increase the traffic with the sponsored placement.
- Commission fees
Small hotels/restaurants do not have an advertising budget as huge chains. It means their best chance to attract travelers is to be listed on abundant resources like Booking.com.
In return, companies that created IOS/Android travel apps may set commission rates from each transaction. The commission ranges vary from app to app (10% to 30%).
- Merchant model
In the model, the app platform buys hotel rooms from the owners and again resells them to guests with the lowest prices. As the platform buys rooms in bulk, the hotels can offer the cheapest deals to its customers.
Along with it, merchants bundle can offer other services such as car rentals, airfares, and many more.
- Premium version
In this revenue model, you can initially provide users with free basic travel app features. If a customer requires advance app functionality, users should go for the premium version.
How do travel apps work?
The travel apps are more than listing restaurants or hotels. Until the date, providing useful and engaging travel content remains their best lead generation channel.
The travel companies mainly rely on
- Exclusive tours
- Travel guides
- Reviews & Ratings from travelers
By developing a travel app, companies offer a more convenient tool to search for tickets, rent cars, check their cost, and so on. Same with accommodation search and booking. With extensive search filtering options, travel app features, and reviews system, users will not spend tons of time choosing the right place.
Industry giants like TripAdvisor & Expedia allow doing all that from a single tap.
Lastly, some platforms work with sales; they make custom proposals to clients according to their preferences, such as insurances, specific tours, and additional services.
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- Points to consider while developing a travel application
Before you hire travel app developers or travel app development companies, some important points need to be considered. We also often face the doubts of our clients.
According to the report, travel apps for IOS/Android bring 130% of more conversations in comparison to a mobile browser.
Finally, let’s figure out the points to consider
- Users and their needs
Ask yourself whom you are developing a travel app for and find out their needs.
Who are these people? What is their revenue?
Here you need to figure out how your ideas will attract or interest your customers.
The better you know, understand, and analyze your targeted audiences, the more valuable a proposition you can present to them.
Finally, it’s a good idea to provide some customized offers when developing a travel app, and there is nothing wrong with peeking at competitors and studying their offers.
- Competitor research
We all aware that the travel industry is quite competitive. But the good news is that fundamental players provide their databases & resources; thereby, freeing you from a vast pool of work.
Competitive research gives you strong and week points and may get a few great ideas about what their apps are missing out.
- Pick the right development team
It is a crucial thing in the app development process. Your teams need to be not only professional, but it should also share your passions and believes.
Your delivery team should assist you in defining the concept based on market trends, identify the project milestones, and add to finding the best performing solutions.
It is an excellent idea to outsource development abroad. Mostly, software development services in Asia or Europe are cheaper than in Canada or the USA.
Recommend: Top mobile app development companies in Abu Dubai, UAE
- Core features of a travel app
Here are the must-haves most travel apps share:
- Sign-up & Profile management
Sign-up is the core feature of every mobile application that includes travel apps.
Enable users to browse the application without logging every time. But, when it comes to savings payment details, registration, bookings, or chatting with hosts cannot be skipped.
Most of the mobile travel guide apps use phone number/email + password combination.
Nevertheless, social login is also a must-have feature for travel app development. It enables users to reuse login credentials from social media accounts (like Facebook, Google, and Twitter) in just a few taps.
The faster you login, the better the experience.
One crucial thing is hosts should also have their accounts in the app to list out their property.
To provide safety for the user and hosts, make sure they cannot skip the registration process at all.
- Search and filters
Every travel app should help users to find a place to stay based on their preferences, dates, budget, number of people, and many more.
The more precise filters you use, the more accurate the results we get.
Primary filters for travel apps
- Dates
- Location
- Cost
- Number of people (Adults, Children)
- Additional services (Wi-Fi, Free parking, and so on)
- Listings
Let’s imagine a user has found a hotel based on his/her preferences. When a user books a hotel, they will try to explore more about the place and surroundings.
Generally, travelers will get below information:
- Description
- Photos
- Available booking dates
- Customer ratings & reviews
- Rules
- Cancellation policies.
If you want to ahead of your competitors, it is good to show listings on the map. It helps users to find out how far the desired location is from their place or nearby area.
To create itinerary apps, developers use Google maps or Apple maps based on the platform they are developing.
When it comes to hosts, they should also have an option to add their place and description to the list.
Hosts need to provide:
- Photos
- Description
- Address
- Prices
- Available rooms
- Booking
Most travel apps will have this feature to book hotels, tickets, tours, and other related services. To implement this functionality, the travel app developers use various technologies and APIs such as Skyscanner, Booking.com, and other tools.
However, most of the top platforms will not collect fees from travelers; they prefer to leave it to hosts.
- Messaging channels
In-app messaging is another feature that you think of adding to the travel app. It is helpful when a user finds difficulty in finding a solution in the application; they should have a choice to ask staff directly.
A plain chatbox will be a good option instead of going for complex solutions (Audio or video calls).
- Push notifications
Push notifications are great to inform you about the discounts, updates, or sending reminders before the trip. Particularly when you are developing a travel app that is rarely used on an everyday basis.
Notifications work for:
- Shows price changes, offers, discounts
- Act as a reminder for services unchecked
- Improves customer experience by informing about booking alterations or sending reminders.
Review & Rating system
The review and rating system helps users to find out what travelers think and discover the pitfalls.
In recent times, this feature is playing a pivotal role in app success.
Example:
After user checkouts from the hotel, he will get a notification asking them to rate and review their experience in the hotel.
These recommendations from travelers will help fellow travelers understand whether the place is right for them or not.
That was the list of essential features required for any travel application or my travel application. However, you can also add additional features like:
- Currency converter
- Weather forecasting
- In-app payments
- Language translators
- Emergency services
- Transportation
Tech stack for Travel app development?
Modern technologies come handy for making travel apps run smoothly and load fast.
If you want to build a travel app for Android, most programming languages are Java or Kotlin. As for IOS, engineers may choose Objective-C or Swift.
Moreover, no application will run without third-party integration and tools.
Let’s have a look at the project development stack (Web, Android, IOS):
1. Web tools
- JavaScript
- Node.js
Angular.js - Passport.js
- Sequelize
2 . App development
- Java 7
- Swift
3. 3rd party services
- Google Maps API
- Google sign-in
4. Testing
- Jira
- Confluence
- GitLab
- Crashlytics
5. App launch
- Google play
- App store
- AWS
- S3
- EC2
Note: Remember that these set of technologies varies based on your project & business requirements.
Cost to develop Travel app in UAE
We are at the final point. How much will it cost to develop a travel app?
If the same question is bothering you as well, then here is the answer.
Another important thing is, the cost of travel app development depends on various factors such as:
- Number of platforms
- App design
- Number of developers
- App size
- Developer cost per hour
The cost of app development is calculated as the number of hours to develop multiplied by the developer cost.
The developer cost will vary from region to region.
India – $10 to $80/hour
Australia – $50 to $150/hour
Eastern Europe – $20 to $150/hour
USA/Canada-based dev teams – $50 to $250/hour
Eastern Europe – $20 to $150/hour.
We cannot provide the exact number to develop the travel app.
The reason is, the cost will depend on the requirements and number of hours to develop. The number of hour’s developers spends on mobile app development; the more it is going to cost you.
If you want to discover how much your travel app costs?
Our business analysts are at your disposal. We analyze your needs & functionalities and calculate the cost for free.
“Get in Touch to know more about our mobile app development solutions.”
Final words
With mobile travel apps, users can plan and book their trips more conveniently; therefore, the demand for traveling apps is increasing.
The use of smartphones for travel planning & booking is increasing considerably, and the competition is not only good for industry players but also helpful for users by offering incredible benefits and incentives.
I hope you have got retorts to all your questions. If you still have any myths about the travel app development. FuGenX Technologies developers always there to help you out.
Just fill up our contact us form.
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