Travel App Development Can Save Your Drowning Business During COVID
Travel apps can help small businesses regain a hold on a dying market. Glean insights about travel app development & why to invest in it.
The mobile comes with handy options when it comes to planning your travel. Currently, 80% of travelers use mobile for planning their travel trips and find the best option for trips. Indeed, the coronavirus has a negative impact on this market. However, the businesses are coming back to their previous state with the initiation of vaccinating.
If you are striving to boost your travel business growth and drive in more revenue, it is the perfect time to leverage the earnestness of people to travel and their mode of search on mobile. So, investing your time & money into mobile app development can help you gather huge revenue and brand reputation.
Why a travel mobile app? Well! There are so many reasons for using a travel mobile app as a model of communication between you and your target customers. Let’s take a glint of aspects that make travel mobile app development a profitable deal in 2021.
Why Invest In Travel Mobile Apps?
- $8% mobile users feel glad to research, book, and plan their trip using a mobile device.
- 33% of French travelers plan and book their trip using mobile, while 15% in Germany, 25% in the UK, and 21% in the USA.
- 26% of searches related to travel occur through mobile devices.
- The conversion rate of travel booking is 0.7% from mobile devices.
- App conversion rates are 5X times greater than a mobile website for travel booking.
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So, what do you think now? Isn’t travel mobile app development can boost your business revenue in 2021? Well! The answer to this question is positive. Now, when you know how significant is travel app development, then let’s understand the basics of travel app development and business models you can rely on to boost your revenue. Moreover, when you hire dedicated app developers, you can know about more business models you can follow.
Travel App Business Models You Must Know Before Kick-start Your Business
Do you think that how you can make money through a travel mobile app? Well! It completely relies on the type of business model you choose to create the application.
Don’t you know major travel apps, business models? Let’s glean insights into major business models for the online travel app business.
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#1. Merchant Model
The merchant model is a widely popular and profitable model, followed by Expedia. The company has experienced a gross booking increase of $28.3 billion in the second quarter of 2019.
In this model, the company (platform) buys hotel rooms and resells them to travelers. Expedia rents rooms in bulk, and this way enables hotels to offer the cheapest deals to its customers.
Moreover, the platform can bundle airfares, car rental, and many other services. It enables platform owners to earn a profit on each hotel, airfare, and car rental deals.
#2. Commission Fee
Small hotels don’t have the budget for advertising. You can use a traveling app to help them in advertising their business by showcasing their hotel to your app users and make travel hotel listings.
Booking.com is the application that follows this process. On each transaction, you can add up some commission rates and charge on each hotel booking similarly the way booking.com does. This commission model allows you to earn huge revenue in less time.
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#3. Advertising Model
It is the most cost-effective and reliable model for revenue generation. It works great for small agents who want to build a travel application. In this model, you can show relevant ads of hotels, tour operators, and airlines on your app and can sell advertising space to companies.
TripAdvisor works on this model and earns money from hotels and flights on the basis of cost-per-click. In simple words, you redirect customers to other business websites and get paid for that. But, you need to ensure that you share great information on the platform to gather huge traffic.
So, these were three major travel application business models that you can leverage to gain huge revenue and thrive as a giant travel brand. Moreover, you can also connect with a mobile app development company to figure out more business opportunities and types of applications you can develop by the combination of modern technology. For example, AR/VR enabled travel applications to gain huge attention and acquire an incredible audience base.
Apart from these, you can also create a travel video streaming application that can attract a huge user base, and then you can integrate an advertising model to earn money. In short, there are so many travel application ideas that can allow you to gain huge revenue, but it’s you who have to decide what way you want to choose to attract people.
Features of the application are always a triggering factor that always inspires users to spend more time on the app. Let’s explore some features that a travel mobile app must have.
Features Your Travel App Must Have For Travelers
#1. Registration and Profile Management
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In every application registration and sign-up is the major feature that provides access of the application to the users. Your application must enable users to sign up the app with different sources such as social media network, Gmail account, or user name.
So, each time when users browse the application, it login through a unique identity. You can skip this process, but when it comes to booking, saving payment details, registration is necessary.
Moreover, at this point, you can infuse the app’s security features, such as a secure login with two-step authentication. Besides, you must also ensure that your app has a better and seamless user experience, and hosts should have a personal account to enlist their properties.
For authenticity and safety, registration and profile management are critical steps; moreover, take proper documentation and details of hosts before enabling them property listing.
#2. Search And Filters
The basic function of any travel application is to find a place to travel, hotel room, or airline to travel. Thus, search filters are an essential part of a travel application to enable users whatever they want to search.
But! Remember to create a simple filter, not a complex one, and enable precise information to get results. Following are the primary filters that you can use to show up information.
Location
Dates
Cost
Number of people
Additional services (parking, Wi-Fi, and so on)
Ensure that you create filters for the aspect that users want to search and include all locations of interest in your database.
#3. Feature For Booking
Booking is another essential feature of a travel application that enables you to earn money. Thus, your application must have a feature for booking tickets, hotels, tours, and other relevant services.
To implement this, you can hire full-stack developers or expert programmers with relevant experience in travel app development. One fine example of this feature is Booking.com, Skyscanner, and many are very popular.
But these platforms hardly collect money from the traveler and prefer to leave the job for hosts.
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#4. Notification & Alerts
Notification and alerts are a critical part of travel applications, and many users cherish this facility. It allows them to keep them updated about updates, discounts, reminders before and after the trip. More importantly, when you are developing a travel app, you need to ensure that your application keeps your users updated about every single aspect.
Here are some functionality of push notification that users cherish :
Alerts for new offers. Price changes and discounts.
Reminders for unchecked services
Enhancing customer experience by sending information about booking changes or reminders.
List of MVP features for any travel application start.
Some sophisticated & information-oriented features you can have like:
Currency converter
In-app payments
Language translators
Weather forecasting
These features add up to your application interface and engage users.
#5. Review System
Review system can be found in each application currently trending to travel applications. It enables users to share what they think and discover. It works simply when a user checks out the apartment; the system will pop up a form asking for ratings and reviews.
Recommendation from travelers will enable people to know about the location more and how it seems.
Cost Of Travel App Development
The cost of developing a travel application can be estimated in three aspects, namely, the complexity of the application, module and dedicated platforms required for the app, and the country you choose to hire developers. Actually, including the country defines the budget of development in the ratio, for example.
US-based developers ask for $50 to $250 per hour.
Eastern European-based developers ask for $30 to $150 per hour.
Indian-based developers ask for $10 to $80 per hour.
Let’s see an estimate for the development of applications in both iOS and Android. To developing a proper app with a set of limited features, the cost of development in India can be calculated on the basis of the deactivation of the following activities.
Also, make the below definition estimates for your app (to develop a proper app with limited features and Android coding, the cost in India can be calculated based on the deactivation of the activities below).
Front and rear end development : $10,000 to $20,000
Technical Documents: $1000 to $2000
QA and Testing: $2000 to $4000
UI / UX design: $1500 to $3000
Then, if we calculate the overhead, the average cost of development of a travel application can range between $10,000 to $40,000. Moreover, if you choose to create a cross-platform app or add a few more features and technology like AR/VR and AI, then the cost may range between $60,000 to $80,000.
Wrapping Up
Creating an app for travelers can help you earn huge revenue. Travel apps are increasingly being used by travelers, and businesses are growing with the help of these tools. Moreover, it is bliss to book and find about the tours and location on simple touch on their mobile screen.
In short, investing in travel applications is a revenue-gaining deal. To create such an application, you can connect with a top mobile app development company and secure a splendid application.