The food sector isn’t only witnessing drastic changes due to digital evolution but travel & transportation are also undergoing radical changes. In the meantime, investing in to travel business is beneficial since it has the potential to bring $433 billion/per annum to the country’s GDP.
I bet without mentioning these numbers, the travel sector will evolve exponentially due to the rise in tourism in different regions of the United States. To facilitate the world, the public and commercial sectors are constantly designing and developing travel apps. Now, let me explain why creating a travel app is so important.
So, let’s begin!
Creating a travel app is gaining momentum around the globe as tourism is getting promoted. Am I right? I think yes! people are excited to revive their health through travel. It acts as an opportunity to freshen their mind and makes them physically as well as mentally.
That’s why having a travel application that can conveniently book your online tickets, hire private transportation, and ship your luggage is worthwhile.
Moreover, Let’s explain the trends in the travel app market. The current worth of travel, as well as online booking apps. On the other hand, we will also elaborate on some hacks to minimise the initial development costs of a travel app later in this blog and get a version for you!
Travel App Market: Trends, Statistics, Facts
Most industries are evolving speedily due to innovations and hence the travel sector is part of it. In recent times, consumers have had to book their rides through travel agencies or agents.
Now that time has changed, these agents are replaced with apps. Travel applications have brought comfort to consumers’ lives and provided them with a facility to book online.
Some travel giants include Expedia, booking(.)com, Airbnb, and TripAdvisor holding 80% of the United States market share. But it still has space to create a travel app to compete.
Online travel applications are increasing rapidly because the travel market is also transitioning to a new era. Here’re some statistics to demonstrate the exceptional growth in recent years as mentioned:
- In 2020, the worldwide travel app market worth was around $396 billion.
- While 2021 has outstanding growth of $433 billion worldwide.
- It is also expected that by 2026, it will raise to $691 billion worldwide.
- Almost 61% of travellers in the United States prefer online booking through their smartphones.
- In 2021, Google Maps is one of the most downloaded android/iOS mobile travel applications on the internet.
Types Of Travel Mobile Apps
Travel makes you happier by taking a break from your daily grinding routine. It will reward both mental as well as physical health. The need for travel apps in different businesses results in multiple types of travels apps as mentioned:
1. Transportation Apps
Transportation applications are specifically designed for enterprises to manage their goods and transport services. Let’s say you are living in Los Angeles and want to send a birthday present to your friend in San Francisco. You will hire FedEx services to send your present.
Companies like FedEx contract with transportation companies to deliver their packages between different states or cities. You can use them as references for transportation.
- Transit
- Moovit
- Citymapper
2. Travel Accommodation Apps
These applications are used to connect travellers with local hotels and residents. These apps offer a diversity of services whether you can book a hotel of their choice or connect with locals for free or cheap accommodation. In the travel accommodation apps category here we have some.
- Airbnb
- Sonder
- TPG App
- Roadtrippers
- LoungeBuddy
3. Tourism Apps
Tourism is playing a vital role in a country’s economy as well as development. Therefore, these applications are promoting tourism around the globe. Tourism apps help to plan travel, ticket bookings, accommodation bookings, route planning, and more.
In the United States, Lyft, Vrbo, Expedia, etc are successful mobile applications in the tourism sector. We have compiled a list of famous tourism apps in the United States.
- Lyft
- Vrbo
- Uber – Request a ride
- Expedia
- Trip(.)com
- Booking(.)com
4. Flight Booking App
These applications assist travellers in online fleet booking. Flight booking applications provide an interface to connect passengers to captains in no time. In addition, flight apps recommend third-party events and international tours that are going to happen in the future.
- United Airlines
- Hopper
- Skyscanner
- Kiwi(.)com
- Momodo
5. Direct Travel Suppliers Apps
These applications are developed to substitute travel management companies to accommodate corporate as well as tour travel. These applications show mediator rates and online tour flights.
- Direct Travel
- Rezdy
- Hostelworld(.)com
The 7 Steps To Build Travel App
Travel apps aimed to resolve travellers’ issues to book their fleets, hotels and online meals. It’s all about the features and service of an app that makes it a favourite of everyone. We have compiled some resources where you can learn more from the basics, in steps to build a travel app. Here we go!
- Decide Your Startup Niche: One of the basic steps before someone starts an online travel business. It’s crucial to decide on your startup niche– whether a specific or general business niche. Ask any emerging startup and they’ll tell you specific niche startups has more chances of success than general ones.
- Explicitly Define Travel App Requirements: The success of every mobile app lies in factual requirements analysis because at this phase the project development team will apprehend app features along with startup essentials to meet success in future. Furthermore, it’s required to demarcate application requirements before you hire a feasible development partner.
- Hire A Development Partner: To bring your product from a fictional to the real world. You have to hire a freelancer full-stack developer or outsource a development team or hire an in-house software development team. It’s also advised to hire an outsourced development company like Origami Studios to get an optimised solution for your idea.
- Optimise Travel App Project Requirements: When you will hire someone for your project, it’s obligatory to reassess your project requirements with one of their consultants. The reason behind this is uncomplicated; to give you an overview, do your project requirements a solution to a real-world problem. Or you are trying to solve an already solved problem.
- Get Your Travel App Designed: After you’ve got a good idea of your needs, it’s time to give the green light to start working on your project and finish it.
- Deploying Your Newly Developed Travel App: When developers have completed their job and testing is done. It’s time to land your application on servers, it might be challenging but again depends on your choice whether you want to deploy it on clouds like Amazon AWS, Azure or in-house servers.
- Maintain Your Travel App: Maintaining your ideal project is a final step. It depends on your development budget for how long you will maintain it. I have compiled some valuable hacks for you to build a risk-free travel app for your business.
Hacks To Build A Risk-Free Travel App
Get User Feedback Before You Build
Instead of blindly launching your application in the market it’s obligatory to engage early adopters. They’ve deep knowledge, interest and background in your targeted business niche where their feedback matters a lot.
Besides, test your app prototype with real people to know about their experiences and how they interact with it. Then, refine your idea according to user feedback and get it designed.
Use A Cross-Platform Framework
Following the refinement of your concept, you must select a mobile application development technology. According to the latest research cross-applications are more successful than native apps.
These applications are less expensive to design and work with any operating system. So, it’s recommended to get a cross-platform development using Flutter, React Native or Ionic instead of using Java, Kotlin, Objective C or Swift.
Creating A MVP For Your Business
Following the technology stacks, it’s time to design your travel app. But before that, you have to consider one or more things. It’s a good idea to get a version of your travel app as an MVP (Minimum Viable Product) when your business is in the prototype stage or looking for seed funding.
Implement Recurrent Features Using Predefined Libraries
Origami Studios has been in the market for a decade. We’ve noticed that unskilled and immature developers don’t employ predefined libraries or APIs in their projects. As a result, as a business owner, it’s recommended to keep an eye on these little details, if you want to build a risk-free travel app with lower prices.
Keep Your Travel App Design Simple
Considering our previous debate about product development. It’s also recommended to keep your travel application design intuitive, Easy to navigate, Responsive UI, Clarity and Consistency in the designed interfaces.
Invest On Experts
In software design and development expertise in travel app development is not everywhere. Therefore, do not compromise on an expert versus a newbie. Always hire experts because they had the experience to design and develop an efficient solution in a shorter amount of time. Let me tell you exactly how much time the whole development process takes to build a travel app.
How Long Does It Take To Build A Travel App? (How To Save Time)
Well, the application development time depends on considerable factors including project size, features, design and target audience. One thing I’d like to mention is that using a cross-application development framework saves time.
For instance, you want to create a travel app for Android and iOS devices separately. It will consume more effort in terms of time rather it’s recommended to go for cross-platform development.
In addition, let me add one more point about how a development firm like Origami Studies may help you save time. We have a team of well-experienced and expert developers to serve more in less time.
Likewise, we also have some development statistics related to project size in terms of time.
A basic travel app takes 4-8 weeks to build, a medium-sized app takes 6-12 weeks, and a high-level project costs 10-18 weeks to complete. Except for time, each project category has its own set of development expenditures.
How Much Does It Cost To Build A Travel App? (Estimate Budget)
The development cost has a deep influence on project success and even more when we have a dense competitor market. Everyone wants to build a travel app like Tripadvisor or Airbnb but believe me it’s not a cup of tea.
It wholly demands features as well as a group of professional software developers to design a travel application at fewer costs. A basic version of a travel app usually costs $15k, a medium-level application costs around $35k while a full-fledged one starts from $40k onwards.
- Basic: $10,000 – $15,000
- Medium: $25,000 – $35,000
- High-end starting from $40,000 onwards
If you are still confused about mobile app development costs. Give a read to our previous blog on the cost to make a future ready App?
Origami Studios Gives You The Full Agency Support
Origami Studios has been working on travel application development since 2013. To service from soup to nuts Origami has teams of solution architects, project managers, software engineers, software testers, UI/UX designers, and business analysts. As I previously stated, we have been working for a long time. Accordingly, we have helped several startups to develop from zero to billion-dollar businesses.
Let me tell you about Trip Record– a travel app which provides commute services and tracks routes through a mobile application. We examine their business requirements and proposed android app development for their business in less cost and minimum period.
Moreover, Origami Studios has a wide range of business contract services including Time & Material, Outsourcing, in-house development, and dedicated development teams. We offer affordable mobile app development services in the USA.