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Topics
How much does it cost to build a travel booking app?
What are the key features of a travel booking app?
What are the benefits of building a travel booking app?
What are the challenges of building a travel booking app?
Imagine a world where booking the perfect vacation is just a tap away. No more endless browser tabs, no more comparison headaches. Instead, you hold the key to a universe of hotels, flights, and experiences, all within your smartphone. This is the magic wielded by giants like Booking.com.
The travel industry has been swept off its feet by the mobile revolution. Today if you want to travel somewhere or go on vacation then the first thing that comes to mind is finding the availability of hotels, tickets and booking them through an online portal. Gone are the days of scouring dusty brochures - savvy travelers now have the world at their fingertips.
This surge in mobile bookings has ignited a gold rush for innovative travel booking apps. Applications like Booking.com, Tripadviser.com, Trivago, and Airbnb are the most popular hotel and travel booking applications.
Entrepreneurs, hoteliers, and travel agencies are all clamoring to join the game. Are you ready to stake your claim? This guide will equip you with the tools to build your travel booking app like Booking.com, fit for both Android and iPhone users.
From overall travel booking, 80% of bookings are made via mobile applications making the mobile apps the first choice for travelers to book hotels and travel tickets.
The travel and tourism industry has witnessed a significant boom in mobile app usage. Here's a breakdown of the market analysis and statistics, incorporating recent data and trends:
The travel app market generated a staggering $556 billion in revenue in 2022, reflecting a massive 53.4% increase from the previous year. This growth trajectory is expected to continue, with projections reaching $1.487 billion by 2033.
Over 800 million people used travel apps in 2022, demonstrating the widespread adoption of mobile solutions for travel planning and booking. However, this figure is still lower than pre-pandemic levels in 2019.
Booking.com remains the most downloaded travel app globally, highlighting the popularity of online travel agencies (OTAs).
Let’s understand the advantages of building travel booking applications.
Building a travel booking app has many benefits for customers, hoteliers, and the application owner.
Customers can easily book their travel tickets for flights, rental cars, taxis, and hotels. Also, they will get discounts, convenience, and security on travel. Here are some best features,
Hotel and transportation business owners can reach more customers, get direct bookings through the application, promote their brands, and set their rates as they wish.
Application owners can set service costs for hotels, travel agencies, partners and also get revenue from advertisement.
While creating a travel booking application, keep the following key features in your application for Customers, Property owners, and the Admin panel. You can add more features according to your requirements.
To manage customer and partner applications, you need a suitable system. It is best to use the admin panel, which allows application owners to control, manage, support, and record important data.
Without these three applications and the basic functionality, you can not create an application like Booking.com
Tech Stack is the group of technologies used to build mobile or web applications. It is a combination of programming languages, UI/UX design, development environment, framework, utilities, servers, tools, and services used by the development team.
Before designing an application, it is important to list the issues to be resolved, the scope of your project, time to deliver the market, the security perspective, and scalability. Depending on these factors, you need to choose the technology solution that has the potential to solve these problems.
Let us have a look through the technology stack used in booking.com.
Jira: Software development tool to plan, track, and release great software.
Though looking into too many technologies seems overwhelming, you can start with the essential front-end, back-end technologies, and development tools.
Once you’ve decided on the technology stack, start designing your app for Android and iOS platforms. Imagine this: you're planning your next adventure, and the perfect travel booking app is right at your fingertips, ready to turn your travel dreams into reality. Here's a glimpse behind the scenes of how that app comes to life:
Start with wireframing your application to get a clear idea about application design. Then prototype your application to get interaction with various aspects of an application. Finally, prioritize your design concepts to achieve the desired look.
Designing an application before coding helps you to easily change and improve your design in the initial stages saving your time and money in development.
Think of the back-end as the invisible magic that makes your app tick. It handles all the crucial tasks you don't see, like connecting to hotel databases, processing your search requests, and securely storing your booking information. Here's what goes on behind the scenes:
API Magic: APIs (Application Programming Interfaces) act as messengers, allowing your app to talk to different travel providers (hotels, airlines, etc.) and retrieve the information you need.
Building the Logic: The back-end also defines the app's "business logic," like how search results are filtered and ranked based on your preferences.
Data Security: Keeping your information safe is a top priority. The back-end is designed to securely store your booking details and protect them from unauthorized access.
Keep your Front-end design simple and intuitive. The front end is what you see and interact with on your phone. Here's what makes a great travel booking app for Android and iPhone users:
Simple and Clear: A clean, uncluttered interface is key. Imagine searching for hotels - you don't want to get lost in a maze of menus!
Eye-Catching Design: Professional graphics and a visually appealing layout will make using the app a pleasure.
Easy to Use: Everything should be intuitive and easy to find. Finding flights, booking hotels, and managing your trip should be a breeze.
Focus on Quality: A few well-designed features are better than a cluttered mess. The app should focus on doing a few things exceptionally well.
Setting up an analytical dashboard helps you to study application data through visualization and customize a solution for it. Application analytics enables you to understand users’ behavior and improve application performance.
Once everything is tested and polished, the app is ready to hit the app stores! As an Android user, you'll find the app on Google Play, while iPhone users can download it from the App Store.
But the journey doesn't end there. The development team will continue to update the app with new features, bug fixes, and security patches to keep your travel booking experience smooth and enjoyable.
Instead of building your travel application from scratch, you can use the software as a service platform for application development. Such platforms not only accelerate the entire software development lifecycle but also generate clean and optimized code for the application.
DhiWise is a 100% developer-centric application development platform designed to accelerate web and mobile app development. Here are some highlights about DhiWise.
Supports widely used technologies for application development DhiWise supports all the major technologies used for application development including Kotlin, Flutter, React, and Swift.
Generates clean code faster DhiWise helps you generate clean code faster so that developers can easily understand and improve application code while adding new features.
Easy to collaborate, share, and maintain Its intuitive GUI and integration with GitHub and GitLab code repositories enable developers to collaborate, maintain, and share app code.
Ready to deploy features You can generate APIs and use NPM packages, and Utilities instead of building elements from scratch to speed up your application development.
Agile development Get your app faster to the market, break a bigger project into apps and ensure continuous iteration with an agile development approach.
Secure development DhiWise ensures app security through code obfuscation, Authentication models, third-party authentication, and authorized APIs.
Version control Version controls help you and your team stay on the same page and reduce rework due to errors.
Prebuilt app templates DhiWise provides professionally designed app templates so that developers do not need to start all from scratch.
To build a travel and hotel booking app use Comfort Hotel Booking App UI Kit by DhiWise and customize it according to your app development needs.
Moreover, DhiWise has many more features such as single-click up-gradation for language versions, and module-specific access to support remote development.
In this article, we have learned about the market stats of travel booking applications, their advantages, unique features, tech stack, and how you can accelerate app development with DhiWise.
So, what are you waiting for? Sign Up Today and instantly generate a production-ready code for your travel booking app with DhiWise!
