As per the 2015 statistics report, the travel and tourism are a huge 6.3 trillion-dollar industry. Do you know that the huge part of this big success has been played by mobile applications? With the partnership between the tourism industry and technology grows, both have earned grand slams and much more are on the way.
Days are gone when travelers were using guidebooks, maps, compasses, and other printed stuff to travel different destinations without any hassle, but now travel apps have made things a lot easier for them. Travel apps come loaded with enormous features and functionalities. Using smartphones, it becomes much easier to carry all the resources
you need to have along with your travel expeditions.
As per the Demographic statistics, the travel and tourism are the 7th most downloaded app category. Approximately 60% of the global smartphone users have downloaded travel apps into their devices and more than 45% in this group make use of these apps on regular basis to plan their holiday and travels using their mobile. If you also have a travel agency or you deliver any service related to travel and tourism, you should have a mobile application to serve your customers.
Travel App Features
Over the last couple of years, travel applications have made the experience a lot easier and in most cases, the apps guide to discover even more than an express out of the Lonely Planet. By opting for mobile travel app development, you can extend the horizons of your existing business or open the new prospects.
Below, you can find a list of the features that make your travel app successful and popular among travelers, so let’s have a look at the features to consider:
Travel Planning
Almost all the travel planner applications may come with different options that are described below. Having such type of application can allow your users to look for different destinations and itineraries, set-up schedules, QR codes and store e-tickets.
There is one of the best travel planning apps named ‘TouristEye’ that is a completely different application as it helps you in organizing your trip or helping in searching the best prices and options for your trip. The app helps you to build “wishlist” of destinations where you want to travel.
For every different purpose, users can use some other apps as well, but it is one such way that is more convenient to have one travel organizer app for all those objectives.
Travel Itinerary Generator
It is one of the most important features that demanded by most of the travel enthusiasts
or tourists. Do you know what is so unique about it? Having an effective itinerary generator only asks the users to maintain the locations that they want to visit and automatically develops a travel plan from it.
Let’s take one example, Travefy is one such app that instantly arranges events, flights, accommodations on a clear and beautiful itinerary. You can import existing reservations through emails or Travefy’s API. If you also wanted to make your app successful, you should also include this feature in your app.
Navigation & Geolocation
When you are at the unfamiliar place or any area, it is only when you know where you are exactly and how you can go to the principal area. As per the statistics, approximately 52% of all the mobile app users are adopting one or another navigation application. This benchmark jumps to 85% among the tourists.
The essential feature of the travel map application is the ability to work offline. Native application development makes sure that your map or itinerary app perform accurately even without wi-fi. But, every travel and tourism application needs a geolocation feature as it will affect the cost of developing a travel app upward; however, users are looking forward to having this feature even in MVP and beta-version.
In-app Language Translator
In-app language translator is a quite tricky feature to implement; however, you get it working in your application, the app will get an instant popularity. Many a time, travelers are not too familiar with languages and they face various problems while communication.
Whereas Google translate and iTranslate apps allow travelers to scan texts for visual translation, translate real-time voice data and written text. But travel companies should consider this feature in their mind if they really wanted to make their app unique and stand out from rest of the apps.
Booking Service
Among international traveling applications, booking service for tickets and accommodation is a highly popular. Through this feature, users can look for the different deals, offers, and set-up notifications for price changes. It is also best to have an inbuilt option for transport or hotels check-ins and a loyalty program in one single application.
These are some of the major features that you need to keep in mind while developing a traveling mobile application for your travel business. Moreover, there are some key points as well to consider when you create travel app.
Let’s Have a Look at the Key Points to Consider:
Competitor Research
These days, the market is totally busy; however, the good news that key players have their resources and databases thereby freeing you from a huge pool of work. For example, make my trip application allows to check out a massive database of user-generated content like reviews, photos, experiences and more.
Users & Their Requirements
If you have decided to provide a high-end traveling mobile application your customers, it is essential that you consider the requirements of your personas. Look who are these people and what is their income.
Do they prefer standard tourist spot or they have the interest of exploring unknown places? If you understand your customers in a better way, it will be easy for you to serve them and suffice their needs. The better you understand them, the more valuable proposition you can make for them.
Hiring a Right App Development Firm
Once you decided the features you want to include and type of app you want, it’s time to look for the app developers for hire. It is the most crucial stage of travel app development process, so make sure that your hired team is not only professionals but also share your beliefs and passions.
The team must have the capability to help you define the concept as per the market trends, regulate the project milestones and deliver
the most reliable solution for your project.
So, these are some of the key points that you should keep in mind while creating a travel application. Ensure that you get in touch a trusted mobile application development company that has already developed travel applications, including different features. You can discuss your travel app idea with the mobile app development team and get the best solution.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR: This article is contributed by Mohd Sohel Ather, He is a content developer and writer at Space-O Technologies company. He loves writing and sharing topics on helpful app development and web programming and latest trends going around in web world.
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