Building a Mobile Travel App- The 2024 Guide

As the technology sector has grown so much over the past few years, the world has become smaller and reachable. However, with that, the fact of the journey itself is no longer a big deal for individuals now. With just a few taps on your smartphone, you can visit a place you want, any hotel to stay in, and any food to taste. So now, a particular mobile app has been developed for almost all types of trips and tourist needs. If you are wishing to make a travel app, you are on the right path to success. Despite having high competition, travel app development is said to be a prospective niche for investments.

If you want to create a successful travel app, you need to decide on what business model it should be based on, and its types and even calculate the MVP cost. However, a question might be revolving in your mind that—

How To Create a Travel App?

Let’s start with this one first

Choosing Your App Type

Selecting or categorizing the type of travel app among bookings. They might be transport, accommodation, and travel guide apps.

Conducting Competitor Research

This step is the second most essential one, as here you need to discover other travel apps that are within your niche and their pros and cons. Besides this, you may also consider the integration of ready-made travel app APIs.

MVP Features Selection For a Travel App

The next most important aspect to consider is to include the following features for your travel app MVP: social sharing, user account, booking, in-app payment as well as location-based search & filters.

Finding Travel App Developers

Find and hire the best travel app development company, proving its expertise with previous projects.

Entering The Discovery Phase

Defining the concept of your travel app depending on the current trends in the industry proves to be a beneficial aspect of travel app development. Here you have to determine the project scope and several milestones in order to find the best technical solutions.

Travel App Development

Getting started with the app development process with a highly skilled and worthy development team is what one needs to go for. The reason behind this is that they will create the design and build the code for your project.

Most Popular Travel App Types

In order to develop a travel app, you need to decide what kind of app you are going to create depending upon the type of travel business you are going to do. Given below are some of the most popular types of mobile travel apps, along with some of their technical aspects.

Accommodation Booking Applications

The foremost type of travel app is an accommodation booking app that allows travelers to view, book, and pay for the rooms they desire. Here, users have access to leave a review and even rating the dedicated place they have visited. Simultaneously, the renting apps that are the most innovative ones include a check-in feature and electronic keys within them. Some of those features are;

• Before entering the hotel, guests can actually use a built-in check-in feature.
• Guests are provided with an electronic key to open their hotel room door. 

In order to save budget within the development stage, one can add accommodation booking features to your travel app.

Transport Applications

By transport mobile applications, travelers are going to receive access to local transport routes and other information. Over and over again, such applications have a geolocation feature that helps to define the user’s location and even suggest the nearest transport options he/she may pick accordingly. Moreover, you can even add more value to your travel app by integrating ridesharing taxi services.

But Do You Want To See How The Transport App Works?

Having a top-end travel app provides users access to routes with official data from local transport companies. Some features regarding this might be;

• Users can enter the postcode, name of the road, or landmark for searching any route.
• The app also shows a transport option, including public transport, cycling, Uber, or walking.

Google Maps stands out as a perfect example of building a transport app with built-in schedules.

Flights Booking Application

By using Flight booking apps, travelers can compare the costs of flights, book one, and pay for tickets. All this can be done under a single portal.

• The app is really fast and quick to inform users about the lowest ticket prices using the push notifications feature.
• With the help of price prediction algorithms, users are allowed to purchase and book plane tickets and accommodation at the lowest price possible.
• Those who are hopper users receive personalized recommendations depending on the flights they are tracking, their history of previous vacations, and their budget. 

So let’s have a little deeper look into the technological side of flight booking apps. Apart from travel app development API from scratch, users can integrate existing APIs within the dedicated platform. As a result, they will display real-time data on flights and also allow users to book tickets all under one roof.

Travel Guides Application

Having a travel guide app for travelers allows them to receive access to local attractions, events, insider tips, and sights. In addition to this, after visiting a particular place, travelers can share their experiences with other app users by writing their reviews and recommendations. Also, you can give users even more value by integrating currency converters, features like text-to-speech, and offline maps. Some features are;

• The app provides users with personal recommendations about various places, sights to sleep and eat, and even nightlife. But all after undergoing a well-structured evaluation.

• Some apps are powered with phrasebooks with a text-to-speech feature and currency converter along with them.

All travel guide apps are powered by a smart algorithm that gathers data from numerous websites, parses it, and then shows that particular data as a description for each location.

Major Aspects To Keep In Mind While Developing a Travel App

Much before you hire mobile app developers, there are some key points to consider for better selection and an effective development process. Here are a few of them.

Competitor Research

The market is quite competitive and has a somewhat difficult technique to rank a particular app at the top. But the good news is that key players provide their best resources and databases, freeing you from a huge pool of work as a result. High-end application API gives access to a massive database of user-generated content that includes various kinds of reviews, photos, ratings, etc.

Users & Their Respective Needs

Having a passion for creating the best app for the travel industry then the foremost thing you should consider is— the needs of your clients. Who they are? What is their income? What is their preference for standard tourist spots or for exploring unknown places? 

So, you need to find out how your ideas will interest your customers and anticipate your audience. The more valuable a proposition you can present to them, the more profit you may earn.

Selecting a Development Team

The fact is that the delivery team you hired for your travel app development should define the concept depending on market trends. Not only this, but they should also determine the project milestones and hence contribute to finding the best-performing solutions for the customer. Finding trip or travel app developers proves to be a crucial stage of the app-creating process. But you need to ensure that your team is not only professional but also shares your beliefs and passions.

Making Money From Your Travel App

Most applications that are uploaded over the app marketplaces are supposed to be free. But when mobile applications became popular, their respective owners applied different monetization models to gain profits.

Given below are four monetization models that one can opt for a proposed travel app.

In-app Advertising

Here, the advertiser pays the app owner for running ads across the app

Commission

The app owner receives a commission from every payment or booking made within the app by the users. 

Premium Version

Here, you initially provide users with free basic travel app features. To receive access to advanced app functionality, users need to buy the Pro version.

In-app Purchases 

In-app purchases allow users to purchase additional travel services, and because of this, the app owner receives a transition fee from every sale.  

So here are the four main monetization models using which app owners can earn money from their respective travel apps.

Conclusion

In last if you wish to develop a traveling app for your dedicated travel business, you can choose the type and adopt one of the monetization models. However, with mobile travel apps, travelers can plan and book their trips in a lot more suitable and easy way, therefore, the demand for traveling apps is growing day by day.