What is a travel booking app?
A travel booking application is a web, mobile, or desktop application that enables users to book flights, cars, hotels and other travel services. Travel booking apps typically include interfaces for searching flight schedules by date, viewing real-time prices for airfares and car rentals at different airports/airlines/rental car vendors, and comparing airline seats based on price and amenities. The app may also include an interface for creating vacation packages with multiple components (e.g., flight + hotel) in one transaction.
Travel booking apps have many features in common with other retail apps like retail apps, e-commerce apps, and online shopping apps. The most popular travel booking application today is Airbnb.
Examples of travel booking apps built with Crowdbotics:
- A mobile app that assists the user with booking travel.
What is the typical cost to build a travel booking app?
A travel booking app usually costs about $37,500 to build. However, the total cost can be as low as $25,000 or as high as $50,000. A travel booking app with a low number of features (also known as a minimum viable product, or MVP) will be more affordable than an app that includes all intended functionality.
For example, here are some previous travel booking app price quotes from Crowdbotics:
How long does it take to build a travel booking app?
A travel booking app usually takes 100 hours to build. However, a travel booking app can be built in as few as 67 hours, or in as many as 133 hours. The exact timeline mostly depends on how complicated your specific app is. As a general rule, it will take longer if you require highly custom designs, niche features, complex logic, or non-standard release platforms.
For example, some previous travel booking apps build with Crowdbotics received the following hourly estimates:
Not seeing what you’re looking for?
Crowdbotics has quoted and built hundreds of applications for teams of all sizes. Browse our historical estimates by industry and app type to understand possible costs and considerations.
How to successfully grow your travel booking application
Become the default travel app for a specific type of user. In order to reach viral growth, a travel booking app must provide users with clear value and outstanding customer service. Travel booking apps can incentivize use by offering users benefits such as frequent flyer miles and points that can be redeemed for free airfare. To increase customer loyalty, travel booking apps should integrate with existing services like Uber or Lyft in order to make it easier for users to book their entire trip in one place. They should also offer users detailed trip overviews, maps, and other useful information to help them organize their itinerary.
Risks and challenges of building a travel booking application
Travel booking apps face risks related to the transportation of travelers, including fraudulent or inappropriate behavior, and the logistics of transporting large quantities of cash. Some apps may take on more risk than others depending on their business model. For example, if your app is a travel exchange marketplace that helps users sell tickets from airlines or other transit providers at a discount, you will want to ensure that you have strong fraud protections and that your platform is adequately capitalized.
