How to Build a Successful Travel Business App?

The global tourism sector is projected to reach $2.29 trillion this year. In such a scenario, developing a robust travel app portal can lead businesses by storm.

Updated 17 January 2024

Sitaram
Sitaram

CTO at Appventurez

Tourism is a huge business sector that includes travel agencies, insurance companies, hotels, restaurants and so on. If you want to gain huge success in your travel business app like Expedia, you need a reliable travel app portal development solution. 

With online travel, the market is backed by eCommerce, the travel booking & reservations trends have completely reshaped. As a result, a new buzzword is trending in the travel marketplace – travel portal development.

Every travel business is now looking for creating a successful travel portal app like Expedia. As per reports, the worldwide online travel market is projected to increase by 12% CAGR during the forecasting period (2017-2023). 

The market has been growing exponentially with the growing demand for budget trips, hotel services, or review-based services, giving fame to travel portal apps like Booking.com, Priceline or Kayak. However, Expedia is one of the most popular travel portal apps. 

Stats & Facts About Online Travel Businesses Like Expedia

Here are some surprising facts about online travel businesses like Expedia:

  • Expedia, a popular OTA generated $8 billion in revenue in 2016
  • In 2016, global online travel agency sales increased by $560 bn
  • Overall, the gross booking of Expedia worldwide reached almost $108 billion in 2019
  • Through OTA (Online Travel Agencies) like Expedia, global travelers make 148.3 million bookings annually
  • 70% of all travelers look for online travel agency websites with the best deals on flights, hotels, and tours
  • Around 75% of travelers prefer to use mobile apps to plan their trips
  • About 80% of travelers agencies profit from brand exposure, income increase & other factors after an app launch
graph of adoption of travel apps spiked consistently among global audience

So, these are some stats about OTA like Expedia. If you want to make your online travel business app successful like Expedia, you need to learn about this travel portal app.

A Brief Introduction About Expedia

From planning to booking, Expedia, a travel portal app is designed to enhance your travel experience. Thanks to all the incredible features, it has become one of the most famous & profitable travel apps. This app allows you to book your hotels, flights & rental cars with the best deals. 

Incredible Features of Expedia

  • Flight Recommendations
  • Scratchpad
  • Itinerary Sharing
  • Keep planning feature

Why Do You Need A Travel Business App Like Expedia?

According to the report of Opera Mediaworks, 85% of travelers book activities when on vacation through an app. On the other hand, 70% of millennials prefer to use mobile apps to research and book hotels before a trip. If you are still unsure, here are some convincing reasons for having a mobile app like Expedia for your travel business:

Every Necessary Information Under One Roof

Mobile apps provide you with the help you need to experience amazing trips. It leads you via managing & making processes even if you are not a programmer. This app manages web app content & keeps track of all records of a client’s interest. So, travel apps have an excellent CMS for maintaining the track record of the client’s history. 

Powerful Marketing Tool

In the digital era, mobile marketing has become one of the main tools to enhance your business & visibility. For that, you can create rich content on travel ideas, resulting in greater customer loyalty. 

Marketing Strategy

If you are planning for a reliable travel web app development solution, you should collaborate with transport & booking service providers. It increases the chances to empower business relationships that help in creating a unique marketing strategy. 

Apps Reduce Paperwork

Travel brochures, tickets & booking papers require a big amount of money. With reliable on-demand mobile app development, you can reduce your labor & resource costs. 

How To Gain Huge Success In Your Travel Business Like Expedia

Having knowledge about how much does it cost to develop an app like Airbnb and Expedia. But, if you want to experience an online travel business success like Expedia, you need to consider these features of Expedia like Android & iOS apps.

Triple Solution

Although 70% of tourism-related purchases are made via desktop, more than half of all searches users perform through their smartphones. So, it is important to create an OTP app that runs on Android, iOS  & web platforms. 

Online Reservation System

Additional services that every user expects in every OTA (online travel agency). Make sure you create an all-in-one platform like Expedia for adding flight booking engines & car rental services. This app generates extra income via sales & affiliate programs. You can also learn about how to develop a restaurant reservation app.

Hot Deals Generation Engine

Serve the best offers to your customers as per their travel history & interests. Hot deals generation engines automatically provide the best costs from hotels so you can sell them for a special price. 

  • Hot offerings
  • Last minute deals
  • Holiday packages

Incredible Features of Online B2C Travel Portal Development?

B2C travel portals incorporate several APIs such as flights, hotels, and real-time inventory. Online travel portal system includes several features such as:

Domestic/International Flight Booking

Travel apps are usually integrated with the flight reservation system’s Global Distribution System(GDS)through APIs. It will fetch air tickets’ online inventories and show that in the front end. In the end, it sends users directly to the payment integration system. 

Car/Hotel/Bus Booking

The travel app has a booking engine that explores its searches for car/hotel/bus APIs in search of suitable deals at affordable rates. 

Integrated Payment System

To rise above worldwide competition, an online payment system is a must. Online payment is usually made via a credit card or payment gateways like PayPal. 

Make a travel app for yourself

Essential MVP Features For Travel Business Apps Like Expedia

A Minimum Viable Product for startups helps you in collecting the initial customer reviews & improves the app. If you want to create an MVP for a tourism/travel portal like Expedia, you need to consider these features:

Trip Planner

From start to end dates to plane booking to hotel reservations, everything can be managed from the trip planner. This feature is your user’s planner for their trip. Make sure it is properly organized and easy to use. 

Hotel Booking

Now, you users can find hotels of all price ranges in their desired location all thanks to the hotel booking app development feature. You just need to have tie-ups with the hotels. On top of that, you will need to have filters based on rooms per day cost, and type. Make sure it has a safe payment gateway option for secure & seamless booking. 

Ticket Booking

The ticket booking feature allows your users to buy tickets to their destinations. What’s more, your users can select the date of travel, locations of seats & destinations as per their requirements. You need some good filters to make search focused and have safe payment gateway options. It will help users to book their tickets directly from your app. 

Maps & Geolocation

After reaching their holiday destination, users can find spots of interest in the vicinity because of maps and geolocation features. There are several benefits of geo-location-based apps. In addition, this feature also helps in finding the hotel’s exact location at the right time. 

Guides

There is no denying that Google Maps strives to make the best list of spots of interest possible. But, the fact is that it’s not better than locals when it comes to finding some cool local places. So, make sure your travel portal also allows users to hire local guides who have proper information about that location. 

Push Notifications

As a powerful marketing tool, push notifications are used for sharing information with users without irritating them. You can share any information that your new travel package provides by using this feature. New customer acquisition, instant promotion, and consistent user engagement are some ways how push notifications value increases with intensity

Review & Feedback

Whether it’s business owners or travelers, reviews & feedback are beneficial for both. Before purchasing a package, many customers have a look at its reviews and check others’ opinions regarding this. So, it’s essential to give your users that power. Apart from this, you can take these reviews as valuable inputs as they can aid in improving your solutions. 

Social Media Integration

In today’s social media era, any app without social media platform integration is incomplete. So, make sure your users can share pictures, check in from multiple destinations, and do other such fun activities with your app.

So, these are some features you can use in your travel app to gain huge success like Expedia. 

Travel portal app development is a great investment for business owners. So, ensure the price is never a hindrance to building a travel portal app like Expedia. For that, you should find a company such as Appventurez that understands the design concept and helps in the app testing process. 

How Appventurez Helps In Travel Business App Development Like Expedia?

Appventurez, a leading travel app development company, has the expertise to elevate your travel business. With extensive experience in creating online travel agencies like Expedia, our expert team provides complete travel solutions. From web design and app development to API integration and maintenance, we offer comprehensive travel app development services. Whether you need a user-friendly mobile app or a robust web platform, we deliver top-notch solutions that prioritize user experience, performance, and security. Make your mark in the competitive travel industry with our seamless booking experiences.

We offer extensive app development solutions for all types & sizes of travel businesses, whether it’s B2B or B2C. Our professionals understand that your online travel portal is the face of your business. So, they listen to all your requirements carefully and create reliable, scalable B2B or B2C travel portals, resulting in increased ROIs. In addition, our fully-customized development solutions support easy app integration as per your business needs. 

Contact us

 

FAQs

Q. How much does an Expedia-like app cost to develop?

The average budget for an Expedia-like app development relies on between $40 to $100 thousand. The price can differ as per the os platform, additional features and APIs.  Starting with a web platform and then growing to other systems can save you around 15% of costs. If you already have some sort of website, you can create a mobile app on top of it. It may cost you 30% less than developing OTA from scratch. 

Q. What are the five most popular travel apps?

Beat the traffic, avoid flight delays and find your favorite destination to stay on your next trip thanks to the travel portal app. Here are the five most popular travel apps: Expedia is a tried-and-true option for a frequent traveler Flighty is an iOS app for people who want to know the location and arrival time of their plane.  Hopper is an Android & iOS travel portal app iExit app is an Android & iOS travel app for travel plans that involve a lot of driving. travel plans involve a lot of driving,

Q. How to set up a travel portal app like Expedia?

Here are some simple steps to follow when setting up a travel portal app like Expedia: Business planning is one of the most important parts of setting up an Expedia-like online travel agency. For that, you have proper knowledge of travel business, events, packages and discounts.  After that, you need to understand how to establish your business presence in the market. It will help you understand your users’ existence.  Make sure what kind of funding you want for your travel business. For that, you can get some investors in your company.  Finally, look for a mobile app development company to create a travel portal app like Expedia. 

Sitaram
Sitaram

CTO at Appventurez

CTO and Co-Founder at Appventurez, Sitaram Sharma has 10+ years of experience in providing world-class digital solutions. As a CTO, he brought his expertise ranging from product enhancements to advanced technological integrations, while focusing on the consistent growth of the team.


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