Technology has advanced dramatically in recent years. Gone are the days when everything needed a physical visit to the location. Everything is at your fingertips, from internet shopping to ordering food and medications to making hotel reservations online. With cell phones in our pockets, the world is now in our hands.
Mobile applications have played a vital role in this rapid development, never missing an opportunity to provide us with hassle-free online services. Travel and tourism sectors have seen a surge even in coronavirus. Not to mention the market’s biggest beneficiary: hotels.
Revenue in the Hotels segment is projected to reach US$106.10bn in 2023. Revenue is expected to show an annual growth rate (CAGR 2023-2027) of 3.32%, resulting in a projected market volume of US$120.90bn by 2027.
Individuals in this business wonder if they should spend money on establishing a hotel booking app. If so, how much does it cost to make a hotel booking app? Many hotels have even released apps allowing travelers to book hotel rooms from anywhere instantly.
So, if you’re wondering how this application can benefit you, its features, and how much it costs, this blog has you covered.
What is Online Hotel Booking App?
The Hotel Booking app is a mobile application that allows users to browse, compare and book hotel rooms from their homes or anywhere else. Convenience is one factor that this app has been able to achieve. You can filter based on location, affordability, and facilities by simply searching on smartphones, tablets, or websites. These apps also give users images and descriptions before they finalize their preferences.
In addition to convenience, these hotel applications provide an easy way to look for discounts and deals without having to go from one hotel to the next, saving them money on their trip and encouraging them to use the app again.
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Advantages Of Online Hotel Booking App
A hotel booking app offers numerous benefits for both tourists and hoteliers. A few examples from the hotelier’s and Customer’s points of view are mentioned below.
Benefits enjoyed by Hoteliers -
1. Increased visibility
A hotel app can help hoteliers improve their visibility to a wider audience, boost their booking and revenue rates, and give them a competitive advantage over other hotels.
2. Improved customer engagement
Hotel booking apps provide direct customer engagement, allowing them to provide personalized suggestions, offers, and answers to their customers’ questions. This also allows them to gather consumer feedback directly.
3. Streamlined operations
A hotel booking app can make managing bookings much easier by automating areas of the booking process, such as payment, room availability, and pricing. This will help you in avoiding errors in your work. This also saves hoteliers time and money.
4. Enhanced customer experience
They can guarantee a smooth and convenient booking experience between the app and the consumer while offering a variety of features to pick from. Consumers can set their preferences for room selection, check-in and out, and loyalty programs, boosting their satisfaction and positive experience.
5. Direct bookings
Hotels can avoid commission costs charged by third-party booking systems by providing an easy and convenient way for guests to book directly through the app. This can result in cost savings for the hotel and lower customer accommodation costs.
6. Personalization
A hotel booking app can help hotels personalize the guest experience by providing tailored recommendations and offers based on the guest’s interests and previous booking history.
Benefits enjoyed by customers:
1. Convenience
The traditional method of visiting every hotel to check availability, making numerous calls, and dealing with various inconveniences has been replaced with hotel booking apps.
Users may now search for and book accommodations from anywhere at any time without visiting hotels or various websites or making phone calls, thanks to the process simplification. This is especially beneficial for a foreigner or traveler visiting a new place.
2. Real-time information
You asked for two rooms, and you got them! You can have two beds if you like! All your needs are met even at the last minute of your reservation.
With the real-time booking, pricing, and facilities available, hotel booking applications have made life easier. We can now compare hotel rates based on our preferences and browse photographs and descriptions.
3. Exclusive deals and discounts
Hotel booking apps offer various exclusive deals and discounts for users to avail of benefits and encourage them to keep wanting to book their future travel plans with them again. These deals vary between different hotel apps, thus making them competitive in price rates. Therefore, the lowest price rates achieve better user engagement.
4. Loyalty programs and rewards
A hotel booking app’s regular customers can access features like loyalty programs and rewards by regularly using the app. That not only keeps the same users interested twice, but it also makes them more devoted to them. Thanks to this, users benefit from additional cost savings and a wonderful vacation experience. Based on user recommendations, this may also result in more sales.
5. User-friendly interface
Most hotel reservation applications offer simple user interfaces that make it simple for users to navigate and use the app. This improves the overall user experience and motivates users to keep using the app in the future.
These hotel booking app advantages are not more than a dream come true for travelers or people who love traveling. So why wait to invest in such a flourishing business? Get your hands on an app that can take you and your business toward success with Syndell now!
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Types of Hotel Booking App
If you have reached this point in the blog, you are interested and looking for a hotel app development idea for your business in the future, or are surprised by the fact that there are TYPES of hotel apps too!
Yes, there are broadly 5 types of hotel reservation systems, but the type of online booking application you should design must be decided upon before developing a hotel booking app. It will help if you are very clear about the services you can provide your customers and the features you want to have in your hotel booking app that can attract more users.
To start with, below are some of the types of an online hotel booking systems –
1. Hotel Consolidator Apps
This app’s work is to collect all the essential hotel information and make it accessible to the users. After that, users can decide which hotel is more suitable for them based on their location preferences, features, etc.
2. Last-Minute Hotel Booking Apps
As mentioned earlier, the hotel app can help users search for hotels at the last minute. These last-minute hotel booking apps are made to make your last-minute trip as enjoyable as it was planned a long time ago. This last-minute hotel booking app makes the arrangements as special as possible for its users.
3. Hotel Chain Mobile Booking Apps
These hotel apps concentrate on or show only a specific chain of hotels and can only make reservations within that chain. As a result, people who appreciate only certain amenities of a hotel stay can use these apps every time they travel.
4. Advance Hotel Booking Apps
Advanced hotel booking app is certainly advanced, just like your plan; it is a traditional hotel booking format. This app allows users to make their booking up to a year in advance. Isn’t that just great?
5. Hybrid Hotel Booking Apps
The program lets users make last-minute and advanced hotel reservations using mobile apps. As a result, the design is more of a hybrid one that combines the benefits of the two user segments.
Top 10 Best Hotel Booking Apps For You!
Here is a list of some of the top hotel booking applications on the market that you might find useful on your next trip.
| Name | Play Store | App Store | Downloads | Rating |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Booking.com | 50Cr+ | 4.5 | ||
| Airbnb | 10Cr+ | 4.4 | ||
| Expedia | 1Cr+ | 3.9 | ||
| Kayak | 1Cr+ | 4.5 | ||
| Priceline | 1Cr+ | 4.6 | ||
| Agoda | 5Cr+ | 4.7 | ||
| Trivago | 5Cr+ | 4.5 | ||
| Hotels.com | 1Cr+ | 4.1 | ||
| HotelTonight | 5M+ | 4.1 | ||
| Htowire | 1M+ | 4.0 |
A Step-by-step Guide To Developing a Hotel Booking App
Take a look at the different steps of developing the custom hotel booking app –
1. Market Research
Start by analyzing your competitors, checking who your target audience is, what they are searching for, and what is trending in your area.
2. Define the App’s Features
The next step would be to define the app features that can set you apart from the competitor yet provide all the necessary features in the app. This includes a search tool, filter option, payment and booking integration, user review, ratings, and more.
3. Technology stack
Choose wisely which technology you want based on the platform you want your app on iOS, Android, or both.
You can select from various technologies depending on your target platform. For example, Swift or Objective-C can be used for iOS, while Java or Kotlin can be used for Android.
If you wish to target both platforms, you can utilize a hybrid or cross-platform development method, which allows you to create an app with a single codebase that can be delivered on iOS and Android. React Native, Xamarin, and Flutter are popular hybrid or cross-platform frameworks.
| Application | Techstack |
|---|---|
| Cloud App Development | Dataproc, Google Cloud |
| Mandrill | Emails |
| Real-time Data Management | Kafka Software |
| Database Technology | Mail Chimp, Cassandra, MongoDB |
| Data Storage | Amazon S3, Google Cloud, Zadara, Backblaze |
| Cloud Environment | Amazon Web Services |
| Desktop Website UI | Chromium embedded framework, Bootstrap, Electron |
| Real-time Analytics | BigData, IBM, Cisco, Apache Flink, Hadoop |
| HTTP and Proxy server | Nginx, HAProxy, Varnish, Lighttpd |
| Streaming Media System | Nimble Streamer, Helix Universal Server, Wowza Streaming Engine, Adobe Media Server |
| Push Notifications | Push.io, Twilio |
| Weather Forecasts | OpenWeatherMap API |
| Phone Verification | Twilio, Nexmo |
| Maps | Google Maps, LocationIQ, Openlayers |
| Payment Getaways | Stripe, Google Pay, E-wallets, Braintree, Paypal |
| GDS Access | Travelport, Sabre, Amadeus |
| Hotel Metasearch Data | Skyscanner Affiliate API, Expedia Affiliate Network |
It is essential to evaluate the positives and negatives of each technology and select the one that best fulfills your app’s needs, budget, and timeframe. To make the greatest choice and guarantee the success of your app, you should also speak with an experienced team of app developers.
4. Design the User Interface
Next, you want to design a user-centered interface that stands out from the crowd. This would require conducting user research to understand their needs, checking behavioral patterns, using familiar design, and keeping the interface simple yet organized. You can also have user feedback to make things easier.
5. Development stage
Once everything has been finalized, from the business strategy to the UI/UX design, it is time for the developers to demonstrate their abilities and create a hotel booking app. The developers incorporate all of the plans, tech stacks, and features to create a high-performing application. The success percentage of an application is partially determined by how successfully the developers work during this stage.
6. QA Testing and Launch
It is now time to put the developed product to the test. The QA engineer is in charge of this. Based on the test results, a problem report will be generated and returned to the development team to be fixed.
The application is ready to be released to the public when it passes the testing stage.
Wait, this isn’t the last step; now is when you need to start properly marketing the app to draw the attention of the potential audience and make it a successful project.
7. Provide Ongoing Support and Maintenance
It is now critical to keep an eye on maintaining and upgrading your app regularly to remain up to industry standards. This includes providing new features from time to time.
Unlock the full potential of your hotel! Create your own booking app and discover new opportunities for growth and success.
Features Of Hotel Booking App
You must be wondering what features would work as building blocks of your app development. Well don’t worry, we have got you covered with basic as well as advanced features to ensure your fame. Starting with some Basic features –
Basic Features of Hotel Booking App
1. Registration
The signup process should be simple and painless. Consumers should be able to register using email or other social media accounts. They should also be able to enter their name, contact information, etc.
2. User account details
Users who make a hotel reservation using your app should have an account. Essentially, they want a personalized dashboard to view their prior, current, and future bookings and payment status.
3. Search options
The search engine lets users locate specific information about the hotel and its services. Search and its related capabilities are at the heart of your application’s primary features. In reality, all hotel app users will make use of this feature. As a result, ensure that the search procedure is as rapid, straightforward, and user-friendly as feasible.
4. Booking and cancellation page
There are times when travelers must cancel their reservations due to unforeseen circumstances. Customers in such situations require a quick and convenient way to schedule or cancel their bookings. They should also be eligible for a partial refund of their booking fee.
5. Filter Option
This function makes the customer’s search much easier. The search can be filtered based on ratings, reviews, pricing, and other factors, allowing users to easily locate an appropriate hotel.
6. Payment gateway
Mobile devices have sped up and simplified the payment procedure for those looking for various payment gateways. Check that your hotel reservation app is linked to a reputable payment gateway. Immediate payments will be available, and customer credit or debit card information will be kept private. Customers should also have no issues redeeming rewards, coupons, incentives, or special offers.
7. Accommodation details
Before making a reservation, travelers want to see the hotel and its rooms up close. The app should include a description, photographs, reviews, social media links, etc. Hotel suites, corridors, and other locations can be dynamically displayed in immersive movies and visualizations with 360-degree pictures.
8. Push notification
Tourists expect speedy responses from booking apps, especially when using last-minute booking services. Your hotel booking app should have a real-time alert system for hotels and visitors.
Besides booking confirmation, the app may notify users of check-in and check-out times, rate changes, interruptions, etc. It might promote specific specials, bargains, and packages at the hotel’s restaurant and remind customers about upcoming activities and events while they are there.
9. Review and ratings
The app should include a review and rating system that allows customers to leave feedback about their booking experience. This will help businesses better understand their customers and provide better services.
10. In-App Navigation
Visitors unfamiliar with the area may encounter difficulties reaching their booked hotel. The in-app navigation feature can assist travelers in quickly reaching their hotel and saving time.
Advanced features of hotel booking app
1. Chatbot
Chatbots are becoming increasingly popular in customer service and are now being incorporated into hotel booking apps. With the help of a chatbot, consumers can get quick answers to their questions, and thus the booking process is easier and time-saving.
2. Social media
Your hotel booking app can be integrated with your social media accounts so that you can share your travel experiences and pictures with friends and family. This will also help update your followers on travel plans and tell them which hotels you stay in.
3. City tour guide
When visiting a city, you need help finding the best places to explore. This is where the city tour guide feature comes in handy. You can get show recommendations of interesting places to visit and let your customers enjoy and have a wonderful experience.
4. Cab and flight booking
Your hotel booking app allow customers to book cabs and flights directly from your hotel app. This makes it easier for them to reach their destination quickly and without hassles.
5. AI-based recommendation engine
An AI-based recommendation engine can help you suggest booking possibilities to consumers based on previous searches and bookings.
6. In-App Translator
If you’re traveling to a foreign country, an in-app translator can greatly help. It can help you communicate with locals in their language, making your trip much more enjoyable.
7. Currency Converter
When traveling to a different country, you must know the currency exchange rate. The currency converter feature can help customers keep track of the exchange rate and ensure they’re getting the best deal.
8. AR or Vr Preview
An AR or VR preview can help users get a feel for the hotel before they book. They can take a virtual tour of the hotel and get an idea of the layout and amenities.
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The Cost Of Hotel Booking App
The cost of developing a hotel booking app depends on several factors, including –
App Complexity
The app’s complexity, including the number of features, platform, and design, will affect the overall development cost.
Development Team
The cost of the development team, including software developers, designers, project managers, and quality assurance specialists, can vary based on their experience, location, and hourly rate.
Development Platform
The choice of development platforms, such as iOS or Android, will impact the development cost, as each platform requires different technical skills and resources.
It isn’t easy to estimate the exact cost of developing an app. Nonetheless, the price might be estimated to be in the $20k to $40k range. But the amount of person-hours necessary to construct the software is also a factor. The hourly rates requested by developers in the areas listed below are approximate.
| US Developer | $100 – $250 an hour |
| Eastern Europe Developer | $80 – $ 180 an hour |
| Asia-Pacific Developer | $25 – $50 an hour |
Considering the basic hotel booking app features mentioned above, developing the MVP will take 3 to 4 months and cost at least $20,000. It could depend more or less on the technology used for the development of the hotel mobile app.
If you want to create a fully-featured hotel booking application with complex features, expect to spend at least US $25,000 and 7 to 9 months to build.
Wrapping Up!
Finally, we are at the end of this blog with all the knowledge of how the hotel app is built. Overall, hotel booking app development is an investment that can significantly improve customer satisfaction and business efficiency and take you to great heights if done properly.
To have the best, it’s essential to trust the creation of your hotel booking app in the hands of professionals.
We at Syndell can help you create an effective hotel booking app with the expertise of skilled professionals. Get in touch with us right away to bring your ideas to life!
FAQs
Following are some of the best hotel booking apps on the market –
- Booking.com
- Airbnb
- Expedia
- Kayak
- Priceline
- Agoda
- Trivago
- Hotels.com
- HotelTonight
- Hotwire
Yes, it is possible to make an offline hotel booking app. An offline hotel booking app would allow users to book a hotel room without an internet connection. This can be done by providing a user interface that allows users to select a hotel, enter their payment details, and then store the reservation locally on the device.
There are various ways to monetize a hotel reservation app. Trivago is a revenue-generating program that displays advertisements to its users. Booking.com, on the other hand, makes money by associating with a large number of hotels. In short, there are numerous ways to monetize the app; a brief overview is provided below –
- Hotel collaboration
- In-app purchases
- Advertising
- Subscription and paid app
You can decide which features you want to include in your app. However, it’s important to consider the needs and preferences of your target audience to ensure that your app is well-received and utilized. Conducting market research and gathering feedback from existing users can help you prioritize the features that will deliver the most value and create a better user experience.
