Create a Hotel Booking App that Caters To All Customer Needs in 2024

Did you know that there are a total of 28.9 million Indian users of hotel booking apps? This has earned a revenue of 8,051 million USD as of 2019.
These statistics are massive and show us the usage of mobile apps in today's world.

Hotel booking makes life convenient and easy. Whenever people go on business trips or unplanned vacations, the booking becomes difficult. Can hotel booking apps for Android and iOS make a difference?

Read on to know more.

Introduction to Hotel Applications

Hotel bookings are being done via mobile apps for quite some time now. In fact, people prefer to take a look at best traveling apps first before booking a hotel to get better insights. They like to get a clear preview and want to compare the costs before booking. This is what most hotel booking apps do for their users. Apps like Airbnb and TripAdvisor give you plenty of discounts too. Airbnb has become one of the world's most successful startups ever. In India, it aimed to attract over 230 million in 2008. It did earn a large population of people in India. There are many factors on which travel application development depends.

So, as a hotel booking app development company, what should you do to develop a unique booking app? Let's see how you can initiate hotel booking app development.

Types of Booking Apps

Basically, there are three types of booking apps today. They are OTAs, hotel chain apps, and hotel aggregators.

1. OTAs (online travel agencies)
Apps like these cover all aspects of travel. They offer booking services for hotels, flights and rental cars all put together.

2. Hotel chain apps
These are examples of apps that allow the customer to book hotels within a chain. The app gets the details of those hotels that belong to this chain alone.

3. Hotel aggregator
Hotel aggregator gives specific details based on price, availability and other factors. They give Hotel data by using a Hotel API from third-party applications.

Features Of An Outstanding Booking App

The features of your app are what will attract potential customers. Based on the popular travel booking apps, we have listed a number of features. Additional features are always necessary, yet these are crucial.

1. User login
This is a must-have feature in every app. It is to personalize your app for the user. You can also add some premium features or subscription requests in this panel. This helps you locate data of each customer easily and earn your revenue too.

2. Details of accommodation
The hotel booking app must show your customers the nearest hotels to look for. You can ask for location permission and give results with some basic preferences. This will include nearby restaurants, places of interests and shopping centers.

3. Online payment
Everything is becoming digitalized and online payment feature is unavoidable. This will save your customer's time when they reach the place. They can quickly show the digital payment bill and go to the room.

4. Easy cancellations
Trips are all about quick plans, in case of emergencies, customers want to cancel the booking. Hence, giving them an easy cancellation option is a must. This is also one of the most demanded features.

5. Availability and price lists
Hotel room availability is another important feature. They get disappointed when rooms are unavailable after prior booking. So make sure your data is always updated. Give price lists for all nearby rooms for sorting rooms according to their budget.

6. Rewards and discounts
All customers are attracted to exciting discounts and bonuses. This is a marketing strategy used in most apps that are developed today.

7. Quick contact details
You can sync a route map to the hotel your customer selects. Also, add some contact details from the hotel authority for ease.

Development Requirements

Starting the process for hotel booking app development is easy when you lay a plan. The budget, team members’ selection, and marketing strategy are also included. This is what every app development company begins with. This part will guide you to know more about the requirements for booking app development.

• The team

For booking app development, you must have decided the platform for releasing. It is either Android/iOS or a cross-platform app. So your team must include an Android/iOS engineer and backend developer. For designing part you need a UI/UX designer. Check out the top designing companies here. Finally a QA engineer and Project manager.

• Budget

Your travel application development goes through a number of steps to determine the budget. It will include app development, design, administration, and marketing panels. Totally it is estimated that one hotel development app for Android will require 52,600 USD. A cross-platform app can cost you 75,800 USD. The total time taken is from 1,052 hours to 1,516 hours.

This sums up the technical and economical requirement. Now, how do you start the entire process?

Key Factors of Travel Application Development

Like any other development process, travel app development includes a number of key factors. These are like the must follow steps to develop a booking app that is exceptional.

• The first thing to do is to analyze the travel market completely. Research everything about the success of other apps, the requirements of customers, etc.
• Select the type of hotel booking app you want to release.
• Always know your competitors. This is because, in local markets, there are different apps. Depending upon local apps or worldwide app, know the features of your competitors.
• Allocate some features for the MVP (Minimum Viable Product). This is an important strategy used in hotel booking app development.
• Make a list of features for future updates and releases. When most features are launched altogether, it reduces efficiency.
• Conduct regular meetings throughout the process of travel application development. Make sure you engage the most potent team into your hotel booking app development company.
• Create a unique value proposition for your app. This must totally define your app from fellow competitors.
• Put up a clear marketing strategy with the help of your entire team.
• Launch with a unique idea. You can create a hype about your app before releasing it. Take a look at other app marketing strategies here.
• Listen to customer feedback no matter what. Make sure you change whatever is necessary.

Conclusion

All of us like to simplify our lives with mobile applications. Today, every enterprise or business firm is developing applications. Similarly, booking a hotel is very vital for every traveler. If you are a hotel booking app development company, you will want to give complete satisfaction to customers. This is the major focus of any developer. In fact, most of the developers around the world are mobile app developers.

Your app must be reliable and trusted. You start gaining customers with the right integration of necessary apps. You can make sure to include all of them with the help of a checklist. Before building any hotel app you should know the pros and cons of that hotel app. This will help you find project managers and developers according to your needs. The outcome of your booking app solely depends upon your team. So make sure you get the requirements right.

By Manish

Sr. Content Strategist

Meet Manish Chandra Srivastava, the Strategic Content Architect & Marketing Guru who turns brands into legends. Armed with a Masters in Mass Communication (2015-17), Manish has dazzled giants like Collegedunia, Embibe, and Archies. His work is spotlighted on Hackernoon, Gamasutra, and Elearning Industry.

Beyond the writer’s block, Manish is often found distracted by movies, video games, AI, and other such nerdy stuff. But the point remains, If you need your brand to shine, Manish is who you need.