Travel Planner App Development

Travel Planner App Development – Cost and Key Features

Gone are the times when arranging an own trip became more of a challenge for people. Owing to technology escalation, it has now turned to be a smooth ride as the world has become more tiny and reachable for all of us.

Today everything, be it a place you want to visit, a hotel to stay in, any food to taste is just at a distance of a few taps on your smartphone. There are a myriad of mobile apps to meet all types of trips and traveling needs.

Sounds great, doesn’t it?

The travel planner app development companies have made things a lot easier, for instance, you can view the entire itinerary at just one location. All that needs to be done is forwarding travel planning details to your friends and the app creates a master schedule for each of your journeys that can be accessed anytime, anywhere, and thus the entrepreneurs are diverting towards investing in the niche.

travel planner app development

Other Benefits

  • Itinerary planner app development creates travel plans instantly. These apps import itineraries from Gmail, Yahoo mail inbox, thus no need to forward verification emails.
  • It consists of maps and owning instructions to the next location.
  • Apps synced with the calendar, thus travel plans appear together with other meetings, conferences, etc.
  • Easy to share strategies or the entire travel plan with just anybody.
  • Apps send various tips and real-time flight signals so it’s easier to stay one action ahead. Also, it assists in discovering an alternate flight as well.

No wonder more and more travel businesses are looking to create an excellent & sophisticated travel planner app, so let’s find here what it takes to integrate a travel planner mobile app with the best features.

Market & Growth Stats

Reports conducted by Research and Markets concluded that the industry of Travel Planner Apps has a revenue generation of $1067M, with a CAGR of 12.2% in the year 2020. This is due to a large number of users using their smartphones for booking their travel plans. According to another report by Statista, the Travel and Tourism market has been exponentially led to the amount of $7,119M in the year 2020 and promising to hit $8,016M by the year 2023.

Some of the major players in the market are CheapOair.com, Expedia, Hotel Urbano Travel, Ctrip.com, HostelWorld, and many more. The market is soon gaining higher competition and it’s going to be much more difficult for the newcomers to start developing their app and stay long in this domain.

Let’s understand a few of the important challenges one should focus on before entering the market.

Challenges

Over the last few years, the travel industry faced a large breakthrough. Yet there are several challenges this industry is facing to outpace the race by the other competitors. Some of the challenges need to be discussed here to understand the gap.

Always high with internet access:

Data availability is very limited, users are not always able to access the high amount of data in the app. Then how to check in the live availability, bookings, or other things when you are not connected with the internet. Bringing solutions to such problems, American Airlines and Delta came up with a solution of tap to connect with a contact screen even when there is no connection.

UX designs can’t reside inside the mobile app:

As you are well aware that the smart and interactive interface is always appreciable. Make sure that your app design can’t face a hit at the beginning of the journey planner app development.

Poor Data Synchronization within the cloud:

Your app could face a situation when your internet connection is lost and you can move further in the app, all the successful trip passes disappear. For solutions to such situations, apps like TripIt efficiently confined the proper sync between data and user.

Creation of Travel Mobile Application

Developing the mobile app brings a lot of hurdles in the meantime. But it is the time you need to keep patient and focus on every aspect to justify your application and satisfy your users. As per some reports by Criteo Application, the users are more favorable to use the app rather than open it on the browsers.

Recognize your user requirement:

This is the beginning level to collect the specific amount of knowledge about your niche customers and analyze that, to create a unique USP in the longer run. The more you get to know about what your users need, the more that will be helpful for your app. Collect all of the major needs of your customer like their favorite spots, their incomes, and what are their preferences and choices.

Analyze your competitors:

Without analyzing your competitor’s strategies and their goals, you can’t just launch your app. It’s not a fair idea, is it? Tripadvisor is one of the outstanding companies, integrated with an API that has a bulk dataset of photos and reviews for the public. Being a new company you are allowed to use such data and lower down the extra deployment time.

Right Mobile App Development Company:

Right intrigued by app developers is very crucial for the successful delivery of the project. The solutions applied by these developers are influenced by the market trends, to complete the milestones and carry forward their beliefs and ideas, useful for the team and the project as well.

Implement the App development cycle in the right way:

Every business must have to adopt a software development life cycle (SDLC) for the success of their applications. SDLC cycles have several models which are introduced from the beginning till the end process, and there are many testing tools for rectifying any sort of bug. This is what an SDLC cycle consists of.

Business Models

Businesses have to adopt a fully furnished model with past successful profits and highly scaled revenue generation. It is the need of the hour to change and adopt different fragile models as per your business. If you are at the initial level of your business, you have to acquire a model that is compatible with your app to retain a large user base with low profits. As your business has moved to the next stage, you can either choose a model with some profits.

In-app advertising:

This type of model predominantly focuses on running the ads across the app and gaining profits. TripAdvisor is one such app.

business model travel app

Commission:

Here the business owner receives a small part of the commission to revolve their revenues. Whenever any booking or payment is done within the app, the commission is generated from the same. Booking.com is one such platform using this model.

Premium version:

For the premium version of the app users have to pay to use the services with advanced features.

In-app purchases:

For every purchase or sale, a small part of the transition fee is transferred to the owner’s account.

Market Leaders

There are many prominent market leaders in the travel planning apps. They have compiled a list of advanced features inside their app which takes less time to filter and get the relevant results. Let’s have a look below at some of the important competitors in this industry before starting your app.

travel planner apps

TripIT:

It is one of the direct to fetch result-oriented apps to deliver you what you are looking for inside the app. By using your email id, this app promptly sends you the details including travel flight details, their scheduling time, rental car details, hotels to check-in, and many more things just within one go of click.

You can easily sync every detail using your calendar, add your personalization like wedding dates, any party times, and many more.

Sygic:

It is again one of the bench marking mobile applications with plenty of features for their users to get explored. One of the fastest-growing companies comprises details and information of around 20M places and hotels, museums, malls, restaurants, cafes, beaches, and many more names, you just type it and get your results. This app is available for both Android and iOS platforms and is available for various audiences and businesses in their advanced planning feature.

The offline map feature helps the users to save the routes, and easily find out the distances/locations within the app.

Roadtrippers:

This app is for those people who love to travel their journey rather than reaching out somewhere. If you are a person who wants to smell and feel every corner of your surroundings but is in confusion to decide where to go, then this app helps you to pick perfect places for you and uncover unvisited places for you. Currently, the countries which adhere to Roadtrippers services are the USA, New Zealand, and Australia.

Google Trips:

Google using the prediction algorithms to collect the data and get the information of the knowledge as per your interest and time, to attain individual trips and day to day plans for you. It is a free application available for both Android and iOS platforms.

General Features/Panels

Customer Panel:

Sign up/Login – Every user needs to enter the details to start using their app using the signup procedure. Either they create a new account or using the Gmail login credentials they can easily fill in the details and use the app.

Make Request for Holiday Package – As per interest, users can choose holiday packages, specify the desired location and number of days. This way they can get an idea about the best packages that meet their requirements.

Book a Deal – Once the user has identified all details, like the number of destinations s/he is willing to cover, travel bookings, and hotel reservations, a deal can be availed.

Ask for a customized package – In case the user is not happy with a particular package, they can request a customized package. But they might have to pay a little extra as they are allowed to create their holiday packages.

Book Accommodation – Hotels booked by users within the package. However, in case they desire to look for other accommodation options, they can book the hotel individually.

Book a Cab – The users can book a cab within the app for visiting the renowned sights. Hence, exploring the city gets easy and convenient.

Opt for a Guide – From here the users can choose the right guides. They can find their names, contact information & pricing everything and can accordingly book them to explore new locations.

Tracking & Navigation – In-built tracking & navigation features enable users to locate the most optimized path to display various landmarks thus ensuring safety and security.

Agent Panel:

Store & Manage Packages – All packages offered by travel agents as well as the ones booked by users are managed & stored in this section.

List destinations – This section displays the nearby destinations of the user’s physical location, along with their special features and graphic images.

Accept Booking – Here in this section, the travel agent accepts and stores all the bookings made by users along with the cost incurred.

Modify Packages and price – Packages that are displayed along with prices and according to market trends and travel fares which are changed/modified by travel agents.

Manage Payments – In this section, the travel agents can track and monitor all the payments made through online/cash mode.

Manage resort/hotel & flight bookings – As per the user search criterion, all of the corresponding & relevant hotels/resorts and flight details are displayed here.

Reports & Analytics – Reports regarding search requests, number of bookings, associated visitors, flight & hotel bookings, availed domestic and international deals, and more, are generated here to capture overall revenues.

Admin Panel:

Manage Requests – In this section, all the requests and searches are managed and monitored by the admin.

Managing advertising & promotions – This is the section from where the Admin manages advertisement & promotional content and all related content that runs on social media.

Manage Users – This section allows the admin to manage the users that are linked to the app and are availing of the services.

Manage Travel agents – This is the section where all travel agents & service providers registered with your app have been managed and also the solutions delivered recorded.

Besides these prominent features, there are a few more like In-app calling, world clock, translator, currency converter, spot services, weather forecasting, and utility finder. These are incorporated into travel planning apps to meet the increasing user needs & preferences.

your travel planner app

Advanced features for creating a travel planning app

Filtered search

As it comes to organizing a trip or providing the complete list of holiday packages, this feature proves quite helpful in offering exact packages to users they are looking for. Mostly the search is initiated based on a user’s lifestyle, desired holiday location, and facilities they’re looking for. So, accordingly, the apt packages are displayed. Like, there could be categories, such as trekking trips, summer vacations, resort trips, etc.

Plan as per your travel needs

An excellent Holiday planner app offers features that enable users to find destinations, book & capture e-tickets along with offline access, QR code scanning, and a lot more. One such prominent app which enables users to manage e-ticket is Tripit.

Maintain a travel diary

Many traveler communities love sharing experiences about locations they visited. Like, many are having their blogs, so creating an app consisting of a diary maintenance feature plays a remarkable role in enhancing app visibility. You can make your app a big hit on the app store by integrating features like upload photos, audio files, videos, etc. into the mobile app.

GPS (Geolocation Positioning System)

For most of them, traveling is about discovering unknown places, and eventually, all of them don’t necessarily have an idea about locations. So, here GPS comes as a major rescue. Most users depend on maps & navigation tools to find their destinations. Integrate Google Maps & Apple Maps into the app, so it gets easier for the users to track locations.

Location-based solutions

A feature-rich travel app enables users to even find places that are not part of tourism. Hence, ensure that your app displays some destinations like food joints, local markets, Wi-fi finders, restrooms, nearby petrol pumps, etc. Renowned apps offering these features are Tripadvisor and Yelp.

Search via Holiday destinations

Often the users are in a dilemma about choosing their holiday destination. So, the app can offer them a list of prominent holiday destinations so they can pick accordingly. This way they get to select the right places and can plan holidays as per their interest.

Create & save Wishlist

Several people go through packages while sitting idle or when some offers are running. Often they save details of packages for future use to avail them when needed. This way, the search process turns hassle-free & enables the visitors to browse their searches whenever required, without the need to spend time looking for packages on other websites.

Share on Social Media

This is one feature most enjoyed by tech-savvy users. They like to share pictures and stories on social media, hence integrating this feature will certainly add to their traveling experience. They may also choose to share their wish-list with other friends on social networking sites.

Added Services

To start developing your first app from scratch, let’s understand the market of travel planner apps in depth. There are a variety of applications based on different niches that are entitled to entrepreneurs and owners. This will be helpful to them to strategize their further planning.

Added Travel Planner App Services

Flight Booking App:

Using these kinds of travel apps you can book your ticket, compare your rates of flight with other flights, schedule your time to travel, and many more functionalities. These applications are packed with prediction algorithms to easily display accommodation at the lowest prices, push app notifications to get notified about any of the important updates and get the tickets with the lowest rates.

Hopper is one such app that suggests deals and other offers to get its users connected with the app. Their advanced algorithms can analyze users’ behavior based on their previous booking history. For easy integration, they have connected with the API for showing real-time data and charts within the app.

Some of the APIs are QPX Express API, ClearTrip Flights API, etc. and payment integrations are PayTm, PayPal, GPay, etc.

Audio Tour Guide App:

These travel tour applications are highly recommended for the users to get a quick instinct and tips of the nearby events, sights, and other features. If users have visited a few of the places in the past, they can easily share their recommendations and reviews in the app and also read other people’s reviews if they want to visit that location.

This app is aligned with major features including Offline Maps, Currency converters, phrasebooks, and text to speech converters. Triposo is one such app. It has analyzed data from different similar websites like World66, Wikivoyage, Flickr, or TouristEye and gives the best recommendation for personal places to sleep and eat, visual sights, and many more.

Some of the important API integrations are Google Directions API and other text to speech feature libraries for Android and Speech Synthesis for iOS platform.

Hotel Booking App:

These are the type of app users can use to book their travel accommodation, review the hotel’s ratings, and compare the prices, all in one platform.

Marriott app booking is one such app, which comes with a must-have feature built-in check-in. For safety purposes, an electronic key is handed to the users at the time of their arrival. To integrate with some of the advanced features some APIs are used like Booking.com, Airbnb, and Zumata.

Local Transport / Cab Booking App:

This application is mainly used by the transport companies to get access to the services for transportation using the GPS feature to get nearby locations in hand.

These can easily be integrated with other ridesharing apps. One such trip mapping app development app is CityMapper, where users get access to the data of other local transport companies by applying the filters like road, landmark, and postal code. Other public transport options are cycling, walking, using Uber services, etc. Google Maps are used to trace the path last visited and also the locations of other routes. APIs like Uber API, Lyft API, Flightstats API, and others are used for easy integration with the app.

Technology Stack for Travel Planner App Development

To create a best-in-class travel planning app, one needs sound and the latest technological stack. An app that delivers optimized performance criteria and adheres to superior quality standards surely grabs a seat ahead of the competitors. So, it is advised to execute extensive technical research to create a feature-rich holiday booking app development.

  • User Interface & Experience (UX UI): CSS3, Bootstrap, JavaScript, AngularJS, Ruby, Python, Django, Swift
  • Cloud Environment: Amazon Data servers, Google Cloud Storage
  • Real-time Analytics: BigData, Google Analytics
  • Phone, SMS, and Voice Verification: Facebook SDK, Google sign-in
  • Database: MongoDB, HBase, Cassandra, Postgres, MySQL
  • Real-time Analytics: Google Analytics, Localytics, Flurry, Pre-emptive, Mixpanel

Required Team Structure for Travel Planner App Development

A right mix of team beholds your journey to the next level. For developing any of the projects there are a certain pair of developers and other experts who are capable of carrying forward your idea into the successful and well contaminated application.

Project Manager: He is responsible for managing every notch of task. His team is performing the task well coordinated and assuring the bug free delivery of the project.

Developer: Front end developer is responsible for managing web pages using HTML, CSS, core languages like React, Java, Kotlin, Angular, etc. whereas back-end developer is responsible for handling the database storages using SQLConnect, MySQL, etc.

UI/UX Designer: These designers are very important for making captivating designs to connect more audiences with the application. They are capable of designing interactive and fluent designs which are highly responsive as well. Remember, people are going to stay longer at your platform only if your designs are imbibed with extra attention. While developing the design, designers are highly focused on user interfaces and experiences.

Graphic Designer: These designers are responsible for designing the pages of the application using Canvas, Photoshop, AdobeXD, etc.

Quality Analyst: They are handling to test the entire project, for any new bug conveyed to the manager for rectifying it.

Estimated Cost of Travel Planner App Development

The cost of travel organizer app development depends on the companies you choose to develop your app. As it comes to the cost of developing this kind of app, most of the company charges on a per-hour basis. For Android, it takes somewhere around 500-600 hours to develop an application, while for iOS, it takes around 500 hours to finish the project.

app dev hourly price

Now the companies located in the USA charge $50-$250 per hour, whereas Indian firms charge around $10-$80 per hour, which is certainly a lot more effective when compared to current market rates. Hence, a travel planner app costs around $30,000 to $50,000 on average.

Conclusion

To wrap everything up, a travel planner mobile app is a heck for all of the travel lovers to connect with their favorite spots in a quick slot of time. The industry of travel apps is immensely growing and there is a high chance for the business owners to make their move with some of the highly enticed features and services. For this, a team of highly skilled mobile app developers is important, to make a unique product with their years of experience and beliefs.

Here, in Octal Info Solution, we have to streamline developers, excelled designers, and other high pact team members who have thoroughly put their ideas and efforts into developing the unique and market-ready solution for our clients. So, let’s get connected.

travel planner application

Arun Goyal

Managing Director @ Octal Info Solution, Arun Goyal is a tech-enthusiast and visionary entrepreneur. He loves to talk about technology, and expresses his views about the trends in tech-world through this blog.