Ultimate Guide to Building a Mobile App for Your Travel Business 

In a busy work life schedule, people want something fun, they want to travel to far-off destinations and experiment with new places. They want to try thrilling activities and enjoy the pleasure of traveling. 

They want comfort and convenience at their fingertips such as exploring places, planning meals, or searching for a travel guide.  

In a nutshell, they want a digital platform or an app that provides everything in one place. 

Travel apps become a catalyst as they enhance the traveler’s experience and change the way they book tickets, plan their destination, or choose the best hotel to stay in. 

Studies from the business of apps state that 850 million people used travel apps in 2023, which was 806.2 million in 2022. 

The increasing popularity of travel apps has become a major reason for skyrocketing revenue in the travel app industry, which reached $629 billion in 2023. 

This online technology has become a popular medium for travelers to book their trips and make reservations online.  

In this blog, we’ll dive deeper to learn about what travel app development is, how it’s affecting travel and tourism companies, and the cost of developing a travel app. 

An overview of travel app development  

A travel app is an online software (a mobile app or a website) that helps travelers fulfill their travel-related needs such as flight and hotel reservations, destination guides, or hotels and rental cars. 

These mobile apps provide convenience to travelers as they can access travel-related services on the fly. These include booking flights and accommodations, managing itineraries, and getting real-time destination updates.  

How are mobile applications transforming travel and tourism companies?  

Initially, the traditional travel process was a time-consuming chore.  

Travelers need to visit different travel agencies or read through a couple of brochures to plan their destination. 

Traveling becomes easy with smartphones as users can travel to innumerable places, reserve a hotel, or book a flight ticket by downloading a travel app. 

Mobile apps not just offer travel benefits or enhance online travel experience, but rather they double or triple the sales for travel businesses. 

Mobile applications offer several benefits to travel businesses. These are as under – 

1. Provide convenience to travelers  

Travel app changes the travel experience to a new level. Travelers can access the booking information on the go, book a cab, explore travel places, and make a reservation at a hotel.  

The traveler need not worry about switching to different apps for booking their trips or finding the best places to eat.  

Everything has gone digital, so they don’t have to think twice before visiting a place.  

2. Provide long-term support to customer  

No matter whether you’re going to run a hotel or a traveling business, modern customers want instant support and replies to their queries. 

While the traditional travel process was time-consuming as travelers needed to find a customer support team.  

The other way is that a mobile app effectively communicates with customers and solves their queries through an FAQ section.  

This way, travelers can receive prompt replies to their queries as the mobile app is available 24*7. 

3. No more paperwork  

Everything is stored digitally on the app and travelers get access to details of the place and booking receipts sent through mail or WhatsApp.  

So, they don’t need to carry piles of documents in physical form such as flight tickets, hotel reservations or any other travel document as mobile apps save everything in one place. 

They can make an online payment on the mobile app and make hassle-free transactions while traveling to their destination.  

Moreover, travel businesses can save their pennies by having a mobile app that reduces the need for tourist guides, paper guides, manuals, and other stuff. Thus, they can save unnecessary costs. 

4. Acts as a powerful marketing tool  

In this competitive travel industry, having a digital presence online is an effective way to reach a broader range of audiences. 

A mobile app becomes a direct marketing channel for travel businesses to get noticed and talk to their customers in a personalized way. 

As a travel business entrepreneur, you can promote your business online and inform customers about last-minute deals or offers, weather alerts, or trip information.  

Thus, you can market your services through a single platform and increase your online visibility.  

By staying on the top of the consumer’s mind, you can build a direct relationship with them which brings more bookings. 

Also Read: Benefits of Online Travel Booking Software

What are the different categories of travel mobile apps?  

Let’s discuss the broad classification of travel apps- 

1. Travel itinerary planning apps  

These apps focus on simplifying the travel experience and help travelers organize their trip-related plans such as travel guides, destination guides, day-by-day schedules, weather updates, etc. 

These apps guide travelers to plan their journey from scratch.   

Popular travel planning apps include Tripit, Google Trips, Wanderlog, Sygic Travel, etc.  

These mobile apps offer insights into top attractions, hotels, or flight-related info under one roof. 

2. Tickets booking app  

It’s an app exclusively designed for ticketing for various events such as sports shows, theatre shows, concerts, conferences, or any other event. 

Some popular examples of ticket-booking travel apps include Ixigo, Expedia, Skyscanner, etc. 

3. Accommodation apps 

These apps provide accommodations (hotels, vacation rentals) to budget-conscious travelers and luxury seekers. 

They can choose from thousands of room options and select the best option at reasonable prices.  

Examples of accommodation apps include bookings.com, hotels.com, and Trivago.  

4. Travel guide apps  

These apps provide insights into the local culture, heritage sites, restaurants, and key destinations. 

It enhances the traveler’s experience by providing personalized recommendations and guidance on the best travel places and the city’s culture.  

Examples of travel guidance apps include Get Your Guide, Tripadvisor, etc.  

5. Virtual tour apps 

These are apps that provide immersive experiences to travelers as they can virtually explore tourist places without visiting in person. 

Travelers can get a sense and feel of different places through 360-degree images and videos. 

This saves the traveler time as they don’t have to visit the location physically and see the cities closer with minute details.  

A few examples include Google Arts and Culture, YouVisit, and Lokal.  

6. Language translation apps  

Although English is considered an internationally acceptable language that majority of people know. But it restricts a few travelers from interacting with others. 

But language translation apps remove such linguistic barriers by instantly providing language translation services, pronunciation guides, and detecting the language.  

Some examples of language translation apps include iTranslate language translator, SayHi translate, and Text Grabber.  

Features of building travel applications for customers  

Let’s discuss some of the MUST-HAVE features you should take care of while creating a successful digital product. 

Here are some of the features of a travel app for a customer panel.  

1. Sign-up/login functionality 

Login functionalities enable users to register and input their details such as name, e-mail address, contact details, and home address. 

Make the login process super simple and less time-consuming. Allow customers to log in to the app either through an e-mail address or through social media sign-up.  

2. Search  

Search functionality should be at the top of the travel application so users can run an instant search related to travel destinations, flight or hotel bookings, or searching for any other information.  

If you see that your travel application is flooded with broad details, try integrating a filter option that lets the user narrow down their search based on various parameters such as date, location, cost, type of activity, or number of people. 

3. Push notifications 

Not everyone will plan a travel trip daily, so it’s better to provide push notifications to get their attention. 

Offer personalized push notifications to users and lure them to book a flight or hotel reservation based on the browser’s history or user travel preferences.  

It’s an effective feature to draw travelers’ attention when they aren’t active on your app by offering personalized offers, discounts, or notifying customers about price changes. 

Even studies highlight that push notifications have an open rate of 20 percent higher than the message sent through e-mail.  

4. Trip details 

The trip details feature helps the customer view past travel reservations, current bookings, cancellations, and other payments made. 

5. Weather forecast 

This feature tells users about the current weather conditions so they can plan their current and upcoming destinations. 

By forecasting weather conditions, travelers can decide the best time to visit the place and plan their journey especially if they’re looking to go for an outdoor trip. 

Features of travel app development for admin panel  

Let’s discuss some essential features in creating a travel app for the admin panel. These are as given below-  

1. Manage users  

The admin can manage user details such as payment, user details, cancellation, or other payment-related details. Thus, the admin can manage the bookings of users with ease.  

2. Agent profile management 

The agent management feature is important to add as it manages and protects the details of the third-party property owners and agents. 

It includes property details and verification details of property owners and agents. 

3. Managing advertisements  

This feature gives full control to advertisers to see which ads are relevant, whether ads follow the policies of the parent firm, and should not play again and again. Otherwise, it results in huge bounce rates. 

Features of building travel mobile application for agents  

These are the MUST-HAVE features that help the agents organize and manage trip details and other trip-related packages. 

1. Property management and trip packages 

One of the most important features of an agent panel is simplifying the process for trip owners or property managers to make iterations in detail such as room availability, when the property is available, the number of guests, or the payment details. 

2. Manages bookings 

Agents have the option of accepting or rejecting the booking requests, seeing whether bookings comply with hotel policies or not, managing bookings, or fulfilling the needs of guests that demand extra benefits such as smoking or non-smoking rooms, extra beds, etc.  

3. Managing payments 

Hospitality businesses can process transactions, and speed up payment processes, invoices, and refunds at once.  

A travel mobile helps them to keep track of invoices, take payments, and manage reservations. 

The process involved in building travel apps  

According to the Trips Global survey, 80% of global travelers strongly believe that booking trips online is significantly important these days.  

Furthermore, 76% of travelers are interested in travel apps that reduce the stress of travel. 

As you can see travel apps are in huge demand, so let’s discuss the process of developing a stellar travel app from scratch. 

1. Define the purpose of the travel app  

The first step involved in building a travel application is defining the purpose behind the app. 

Identify what problems travelers are facing and what unique value proposition you offer. 

Based on your travel objective, specify the type of travel app you’d offer such as a travel guide app, an itinerary app, an accommodation app, or a booking app. 

You need to create a travel app that solves the pain points of the target audience. For that, know them inside out and research them through surveys or polls.  

This way you can create a mobile application that aligns with their needs and preferences. 

2. Perform the market research 

Simon Sinek once said – Always start with a WHY. WHY is this competitor so successful?  

No matter how great your product idea is, you should always do the groundwork before building a mobile app. 

Study your competitors’ strengths and learn lessons from them as to why their mobile apps are leading in the industry.  

Why do customers love downloading their travel app and not anyone else? 

Is it because of an amazing UI design, an interactive interface, or too many positive reviews? 

That’s where market research app helps you to get an idea of why your competitor apps are so unique and jot down the things that are missing in their app.  

3. Decide the peculiar features of a travel mobile app 

Identify the essential features of your travel app that address the needs of the target audience. 

Outline the basic or key functionalities in your travel app such as managing bookings, creating itineraries, and real-time updates to simplify the travel experience. 

Then, you can create a checklist of additional features in a travel mobile app such as offline support, user reviews, and payment gateways. Including these features glues the eyes of the target audience. 

4. Outsource the work to travel app partner 

Now, you need to hire good travel app developers who have expertise in creating applications and have worked in the past. 

This saves you time and helps you focus on the other side of things that bring revenue to your business. 

Before you find a relevant match for your travel needs, make sure to collaborate with one that tick marks the below-mentioned criteria –  

• Relevant experience in travel app development?  

• What projects have they worked on in the past? 

• Do they have a requisite portfolio?  

• Do they have a dedicated team of designers, developers, and testers?  

• Whether they possess project management skills or not?  

5. Create an engaging UI/UX design for the app  

The next step in the travel app development process is creating a stellar UI/UX design for the mobile app. The UI/UX design should be clean, have readable fonts, and use bright colors that enhance user experience. 

The mobile app should have clear imagery, vivid descriptions of places along with intuitive navigation that hooks the users to book their vacation spot or plan their next adventure trip.  

A compelling UX results in increased conversion rates for the travel business.  

6. Develop and test the travel mobile app  

Now, travel app developers translate your dream into a live app. You would explain your needs to them, and they will map out the entire development strategy to help you accomplish your travel goals. 

After developing the travel app, they will conduct a rigorous testing process to ensure that your app is free from bugs and gives a flawless performance.   

An app with too many features might not always resonate with the target audience’s needs. If it delivers high performance, it is of good use to them.  

7. Launch your travel app 

The next important stage is to deploy your travel app on respective stores such as Google Play or App Store. 

When the application is launched, partner with an app development agency with a dedicated team of testers to get continuous support and maintenance. 

Ask for feedback from the target audience through surveys or polls and inform the development team about the loopholes you received. 

8. Promote your app 

No matter how good your travel app is, if your target audience isn’t aware of it, then the app is of no use. 

Thus, you need to promote your application by spending money on ads, investing in social media marketing or collaborating with a travel influencer.  

Methods to monetize the travel app 

There are multiple revenue streams by which you can make money with the travel mobile app– 

1. Advertising  

You can generate money through a travel app by giving an advertisement space to hospitality, travel and tourism businesses, airlines, tour operators, etc. 

You can display their ads and charge an advertisement fee based on various models such as pay-per-click, pay-per impressions, or conversions. 

2. In-app purchases  

In-app purchases allow the users to unlock other things apart from booking flight tickets such as offering premium features or selling offline products/services. 

For Instance – If you have an accommodation travel app, you can offer a premium feature of language translation when the travelers check in. 

3. Premium/Freemium model  

Under this monetization strategy, you can provide access to users for free to use the basic features but for advanced features and functionalities, ask them to subscribe to a paid version. 

That’s the most common way of generating income.  

For instance – Tripit is a travel app that organizes travel details of users at one place.  

Whether they’re going for a flight, airport shuttle, or hotel reservation, it supports all bookings and gives them minute details across all devices. Thus, it makes their journey hassle-free.  

It has its free and pro plans.  

Its free version allows users to manage their itineraries with ease.  

While its paid version changes their travel experience. It provides users with real-time flight updates, lounge access information, when they should leave, flight changes, or any baggage information. 

4. Commission model  

The other way to make money through the travel app is by charging commission or cut from hotels, restaurants, or other service providers and they can showcase their services on your platform. 

Thus, your app becomes more profitable when it has a larger user base. 

Travel app development cost  

Building a simple travel app ranges between $30,000 to $60,000.  

If you build an advanced travel mobile app, the cost will vary. The travel app development process depends on various factors such as –  

• Type of travel app you want to develop.  
• Geographical location of the development team or an agency.  
• Type of platform for which you want to build an app.  
• Timeline of development projects. 
• The expertise of the developers.  
• Do you want to go for app integrations?  

Wrapping up  

From the above guide, you understand that travel mobile apps have become a major milestone in the traveling landscape. When everything has shifted online, it’s a better time for you to make your service available online with just a few taps.  

Modern travelers have become tech-savvy and are more inclined towards making travel plans and booking trips online. You just can’t afford to lose such great revenue that your competitors are making. 

Though traveling has become highly competitive, you can hit the mark in the digital world by creating a stellar travel mobile app that converts your travel app vision into reality.  

Looking for a travel app development agency?  

At BigOhTech, we carry 15+ years of expertise in creating user-friendly and visually appealing travel app solutions that WOW your customers. 

We deal in an array of travel app development services from booking solutions to management apps and creating a customized travel platform for your audience. 

We’ll create an engaging product that increases your customer engagement rate and meets the highest quality standards. 

After working with 50+ clients across the globe, we know how to develop an impeccable travel app that convinces customers to choose your product over several others.