How To Build a Travel app?

And the trend is going up! According to the UN World Tourism Organization, international tourist arrivals grew by 6% in 2018, reaching a peak of 1.4 billion people. Forecasts say that the number will increase up to 1.8 billion tourists by 2030.

What do all these figures mean to you? They prove that travel app development is a hot market opportunity, no matter whether you’re a Startup Team of travel-enthusiasts or an established Travel Agency. What are the other reasons? Let’s check!

🤔 Why Develop a Mobile Travel App?

A rapidly increasing number of international tourist isn’t the only argument in favour of creating a mobile app for travellers. A study conducted by Google together with PhocusWright gives a few more insights:

• About 52% of travellers (varies from 27% to 87% depending on the country) plan, research and book their entire journey using only a mobile device.
• Over 70% of travellers from the USA confirm that they “always” use smartphones while traveling.
• Additionally, Opera Mediaworks reveals that up to 85% of tourists book travel activities via mobile devices.
• Finally, according to the study by WYSE Travel Confederation’s New Horizons the second biggest consideration after the price is the ability to book through mobile devices.

The stats above prove that there’s actually a huge market and demand for a mobile app for travellers so you have good chances to find your Product-Market Fit.

If you already own a business in the travel industry (for example, you’re a travel agency owner) you will also benefit after you build a travel app. Here’s how:

1. You will establish a new channel to interact with your customers and sell tours right when people are using your app and are thinking about booking a tour.
2. You can run in-app loyalty campaigns to activate your “sleeping” customers and generate repeat sales.
3. With a Mobile App, you’re able to use some retargeting features not available for websites (e.g., sending push notifications with last-minute tours for Easter).
4. Mobile applications provide you with wide analytical capabilities to make data-driven decisions in the future.

Yet, when it comes to travel app development one of the challenges is to decide on what exactly you’re building.

Are you thinking about an Expedia-like ticket/hotel booking app? Or you would like to create a travel app to explore local events, just like GetYourGuide? Or maybe you plan to develop something like Google Trips?

Since you haven’t shared your idea with us (but we strongly suggest doing this after you finish reading 😄 ) we decided to divide all the features into a few logic blocks. Therefore, you can get an idea of what your app will look like by choosing and combining only those blocks that you need for your Project.

📱 Mobile Travel App Development: Your Features List

Basic Block: Registration, Profiles, Push Notifications, Payment Gateway ⚙️

These are common features that don’t depend on the type of application and should be in your MVP-Backlog in almost any case.

Sign Up + Profiles 🔐

Sign Up is a core piece of functionality that allows users creating personal profiles in your application. Here are a few important tips from our own experience:

1. People hate long Sign Ups so ask only the most essential info. The less you ask, the more users will actually create profiles. If your business model allows it – avoid using passwords, and provide your users with the option to use a Passwordless Login, e.g. using Auth0 or Firebase.
2. Social Login is a must-have. It allows reusing personal information from social media just in a few taps.
3. Never ever make a mandatory Sign Up for using the app. Ask for this only when it’s really needed (for example, at the checkout stage) but leave an option to checkout without creating a profile as well.

Discounts 📉

Looking back again at the Google Trips app, we can’t help but recommend you to create a travel app with local discounts.

This usually relates to local tours and activities, airport transfers, taxi and car renting services – everything that may be highly relevant to travellers.

You may also try to improve this feature and introduce a Groupon-like service which allows people to get even more discounts for a small fee.

Currency Converter 💹

Just like the Weather Screen, the Currency Converter doesn’t match the MVP-Backlog but provides some additional value to your customers.

As in the previous case, to build a travel app with the Currency Converter you will need to integrate an appropriate API and fit this feature into a beautiful UI.

🗃 Case Study: Voya, Tangery, Expedia, GetYourGuide

Voya (Stomotion’s Client)

Voya is the Expedia-like application but for business travels that was developed with the support of our team. Its services include a convenient accounting and billing processes, live-reporting and date guideline management.

The booking process looks as follows:

1. User requests a flight or a hotel through the Voya Chat.
2. After the request is placed, travel agents (nowadays even an AI) pick the best options considering the journey budget and other preferences.
3. When the user confirms, he may sit back and relax. Voya’s professionals will send the booking confirmation, boarding passes, and the calendar entry.

Also, the Activity Screen is of top-notch quality. It’s noticeable because of its nice UI and comprehensive information about the offer which includes:

• Several photos to attract attention and visualize the activity.
• An exact price.
• A short description with key info – duration, cancellation policy, wheelchair accessibility, pick-up services, the guide’s spoken languages, etc.
• A detailed description of the activity itself (what people will visit and what will they do there).
• Ratings and reviews of the activity from other users.

As a small bonus, the app also shows the current weather in the chosen city.

👨‍💻 Travel App Development Approaches

Ok, let’s imagine that now you have a clear vision of your future app. Yet, you still have to turn your ideas into a working software product. Possible 3 ways to do it are:

1. App Builder.
2. In-House Development.
3. Outsourcing.

Let’s briefly review the pros and cons of each solution.

App Builders

App builders are online development tools that allow creating mobile applications with no coding knowledge. All you have to do is to open the website and assemble your application from different screens, features, and blocks like a puzzle.

🛠 Tech Stack

As we promised before, here are some technical tools that will help you make own travel app:

• To get data about available flight options you may use Skyscanner, Travelopro or Trawex APIs. You may also access APIs from different flight companies like Lufthansa.
• ZUMATA Hotel Booking API or Expedia Affiliate Network API are tools that will help to implement the hotel booking functionality.
• To implement flight alerts, you may use Alerts API.
• OpenWeatherMap, AccuWeather and Weather Underground are some of the best APIs when it comes to collecting weather data.
• If you’re looking for proven Payment Gateways, pay attention to the following options: Android Pay, Apple Pay, PayPal, Stipe and Braintree APIs.
• To implement the Social Login you may use Twitter, Instagram or Facebook Mobile SDKs. To provide such options as SMS-auth or paswordless email authorization use Auth0 or Firebase.
• One of the top Push Notifications providers are Firebase Cloud Messaging (used by our team as well), OneSignal (this one too), Urban Airship and Amazon SNS.

💰 Cost to Build a Travel App

Here's our estimate of travel app development costs:

So the approximate cost to build a travel app like Expedia is about $29-36,00. However, we don't think that building such an "everything-in-one" app is a good point to start. Actually, such major pieces of functionality as hotel booking or car rental can be implemented within separate applications.

To calculate the costs of travel app development we took an average for Eastern Europe rate of $45/hour. However, to get a more accurate estimate (which will be likely lower) we need some more information about your project. Share it by contacting us and we'll prepare a precise estimate just for you!

💡 Takeaways

Whew, we’ve finished. Our Team hopes that you will use this in-depth article as your guide to mobile travel app development to revolutionize the travel market. Let’s briefly recall all key steps:

1. Clearly define what are you building: type, main functionality and the target audience of your application and how it solves problems of your customers.
2. Fill the Development Backlog with features, choosing only those that match your MVP. Remember, your app shouldn’t be able to do everything – it just needs to solve the pain of your users better than any other app out there.
3. Find the right Tech Partner (whether you’re building an In-House Team or Outsourcing your development).
4. Get things done!

Stormotion Team can help you with travel app development – we can develop an MVP or a PoC for you, validate your business model, scale your Product or act as an interim-CTO.