Travel App Development: Benefits, Features, Types, Cost Estimation & App Monetization

In this blog, you are going to know how to develop a travel app for your business in 2019.

In 2018, an online travel booking segment generated revenue of 93.68 billion U.S. dollars, according to Statista.com.

It is estimated that the revenue of online travel booking segment amounts to US$424,661m in 2019. In fact, one-third of all travel bookings are now made on mobile devices, as per Criteo.com. Thus, it is essential for every travel business to have a mobile application to increase conversion rate by 5x.

Why You Should Go For Travel App Development?

Mobile app development is essential for every industry, whether it is food, on-demand grocery or travel industry. As most of the businesses are going mobile, it is essential to have a travel application to get below advantages.

Easy maintenance:

With the help of mobile technology, travel businesses easily maintain and manage all the content on an application. It allows a business to track the records of client’s booking and interest in a better way.

One-stop Solution:

Whether you want to book tickets, hotels, or rent a car, travel planning can be done in the best way with travel app development.

Brand Exposure:

Increase brand exposure through travel app development. Travel application helps clients to use your services on the go and thus, it increases the chance of brand recognition and ultimately, business.

Customization:

When it comes to customization, travel apps are no exceptions. Travel applications allow people to customize their travel packages for different purposes, for example, honeymoon package, family holidays, or corporate picnics.

Act as a Marketing Tool:

With travel mobile application, businesses able to interact with the audience and find out what they are looking for. Even, integrating social sharing button allows their audience to get up-to-date with your customer’s lifestyle and deliver services accordingly.

Are you thinking to develop your own travel application? Check out 15 important features to integrate when developing successful travel application for your business.

Types of Travel Applications

Travel App for Flights Booking

Flight booking travel application helps to book flights to your destination. There are many flight booking application helping users to search for cheap flights, find deals, and book the tickets.

Skyscanner – Travel Deals is one of the best apps for finding cheap flights, hotels & cars. This application is available for iOS and Android. Skyscanner helps users to find and compare flights all in one place. This application also shows the cheapest months and dates to fly by using chart views and calendar. In addition, it also sends a notification to the users when the best deals available for the users.

Travel Apps for Hotel Booking

Searching for the hotel is as important as planning to your destination. Thanks to the mobile app development, there is a hotel booking application available to book hotel or homestay.

Booking.com is the highest rated travel app for searching for hotels, motels, and vacation homes. Whether you are finding a hotel for vacation, business trip or a weekend getaway, booking.com is the best app where 27 million hotels, vacation rentals, homes, apartments, and other unique places are listed.

Travel App for Navigation

An uncountable number of city and location specify travel application that helps users to navigate cities and its area like places, streets, shops and so on.

Acquired by Google in 2013, Waze is another popular application, having a range of real-time updates and alerts features. This application informs users about crashes, traffic, police, hazards, crashes, etc. faster than other apps. In addition, it also allows users to listen to your favorite apps for music, podcasts, etc. right from Waze.

Travel App for Language Help

Language translation application is helpful to the users when they are visiting countries where people speak their native language. In such a situation, English is a common language that one can use to make food ordering or shopping. If you are on the road and in need of translation, language help apps are useful.

Duolingo is one of the among language help applications, helping users to learn more than 30 languages to choose from. This app allows users to practice reading, speaking, writing and communicating with Chatbots. Moreover, it helps users to track the progress, and earn rewards as well.

How to Monetize Travel Application?

In-app Purchases

One of the excellent sources of app monetization is in-app purchases. Around 47% of total revenue is generated from in-app purchases. The best thing you can do for your business is to develop a free app and include in-app purchase for a premium version.

App Upgrade to Remove App

Many app users don’t like to see ads in their apps, and thus, they are removing ads from their application by paying extra amount. It would be great for businesses to develop two versions of travel application, i.e. with ads and without ads. Offering the paid version without ads will generate direct sales.

Revenue Generation with Ads

In-app ad-revenue is the main source of income for businesses. There are mainly three types of applications, i.e. Cost per Thousand Impression (CPM), Cost per Click (CPC) and Cost per Action (CPA). Mostly, businesses and developers prefer ‘Cost per Thousand Impression’, as it doesn’t require a user to click on the ads for businesses to earn for that.

Affiliate Programs

There are many companies like Apple, Google and Microsoft offering affiliate programs to mobile app developers. With this affiliate program, businesses can choose from a wide range of applications for promotion without paying high commissions (compared to partnership).
Businesses can also search for other businesses, who are providing affiliate programs with paid memberships to earn recurring commissions.

How much does it cost to develop a travel application in 2019 and beyond?

If you are developing your first travel app, it is recommended to check out some of the popular apps to get an idea about the features and functionality to integrate. If you are looking for the exact travel app development cost, let me tell you it doesn’t happen in one development phase. One should have to invest time and innovation, in addition to the cost.

Developing the best travel application by integrating advanced features and functionality includes different stages like planning, development, and testing. However, some primary factors that help businesses to identify the cost are business model, targeted platforms, unique features, design, and developer.

To Sum Up

Whether it is summer or winter, those people, who love traveling, are searching for an application to plan a vacation. Booking made via mobile application converts at a higher rate and trips likely to be slightly higher value. So, if you are running a travel business, then it’s time to develop your own travel application, to increase the conversion rate of your business.

If you need guidance regarding what features and functionality to integrate into your travel application, feel free to contact us. Our mobile development team experts are providing 30-minutes free consultation to sort out your queries.