Travel app developers

Auto, Aviation & Transportation

Travel app developers

The global travel industry is especially popular today in the globalized world, and if you think that the pandemic will limit it, reality shows you that it is not the case. Yes, there was a decline, as you can see in the statistics below. But see the temps of the recovery, and as you remember, the pandemic was still highly active in 2021. Add the fact that tickets, reservations, and other travel-related sales become online, and you’ll see the extremely attractive set of various niches in this industry!

Online applications that help people plan their travel, buy tickets, and store documents will become increasingly important in their lives. You can contact one of the travel app developers to know more and see how you can develop such an app. Let’s see the top 10 examples, explore some essential features, and see how your app can find its niche and compete with larger market players.

Trip planning apps: What are they?

Trip planning apps are mobile applications designed to assist users in planning and organizing their travel experiences. They offer a range of features and tools that help users go on their journeys smoothly and with increased interest. Let’s review them.

• Destination research includes providing details about popular tourist spots, local attractions, cultural landmarks, and clubs/restaurants. Apps providing this information integrate with maps, review services, and various databases to gather essential information about safety, weather, and visa requirements.
• Flight and hotel booking, along with ticket purchasing and reservation, provides essential features of smart search, price comparison, and places’ availability.
• Itinerary creation services are similar to goal planning, enabling users to create detailed itineraries (trip schedules). They help organize activities, set reminders, and integrate with other services, too.
• Offline access includes the ability to download maps, guides, itineraries, tickets, and other travel information.
• Travel tips and recommendations services from apps’ creators, other users, or local experts enables users to discover various local experiences and enhance their travel adventures. In addition, they make travel much more secure.
• Expense tracking services can set a travel budget and send notifications when users exceed their planned spending. Finance management is especially important when you’re away from home, and these features help do this efficiently.
• Social Features allow users to connect with fellow travelers, communicate with service providers, share experiences, and seek recommendations from a community. As you’ll see, communication is essential for such apps and thus, this service will be highly useful.
• Real-time updates include adjustable notifications connected with all other services.
• Lastly, apps can provide personalized recommendations based on the analysis of user’s preferences, travel history, and interests. It can enhance their experience and help them travel more while spending less.

Their disadvantages include limitations and possible problems with the UI and functionality. As you can see below, they often cause pain in customers, which demonstrates how bugs and interface flaws can break any good idea.

People often use travel apps during time shortages, and all these problems become very annoying obstacles. Mobile apps cannot cover such a large topic as travel fully, and while they can solve some parts of the travel routine, their inability to solve others may be frustrating. In addition, all mobile apps can be bugged, and in case of an incorrect booking, the frustration will be even harder.

As you can see, all these disadvantages are connected with the idea’s realizations, not the idea itself. So, be sure to develop your app thoroughly.

Top-10 examples

Despite all possible problems, trip-planning apps are still highly popular. They are robust tools to plan, organize, manage, and enhance travel experiences. Let’s see how these features are realized in the 10 largest market players.

1. TripAdvisor is a popular platform that provides reviews, ratings, and recommendations for various places to live and visit worldwide. Such valuable information helps customers plan their trips consciously.
2. Airbnb allows users to find unique living places around the world provided by various owners. Often it became a significant part of the travel experience. They include such exotic examples as treehouses, igloos, and yurts. All user experience is personalized and you can search for the accommodation which is good for you and at an affordable price.
3. Expedia is a universal travel booking platform. Hotels, air tickets, cars for rent, and other options to go somewhere and live there are present here. As in all good apps, it has personalized content and smart search to find anything you need.
4. Booking.com offers a vast selection of hotels, hostels, apartments, and villas. It provides detailed information, customer reviews, and easy booking options for accommodation with a large price range.
5. Kayak is a travel meta-search engine: yes, it combines search services of all apps types mentioned above! This wonderful service compares prices across different travel sites to find the best tickets, hotels, rental cars, and more. It simplifies the travel process and is good to be used during its planning.
6. TripIt is a travel organizer app that creates itineraries quickly and automatically based on users’ booking confirmation emails. It consolidates all travel-related information, such as ticket prices, hotels cost and availability, reviews, and activities, in one place for easy access.
7. Google Travel organizes travel information from Google accounts and services. It provides suggestions for activities, attractions, local groceries, and other places. Integration with Google Maps enables users to create routes directly on their maps, and emails from Gmail can be used for travel organizations, too.
8. Skyscanner offers flexible search options for air tickets, notifying users about price drops and deals. Therefore, it is well-suited for planning one’s trip between countries, helping make it as cheap as possible. 
9. TripHobo is a trip-planning platform that allows users to create personalized travel itineraries. It offers suggestions for attractions, activities, and accommodations in various destinations, helping users optimize their time and maximize their experiences. See its interface example on the screenshot below from Softpedia.
10. Roadtrippers was designed for road trip enthusiasts. It helps users discover unique attractions, scenic routes, and offbeat locations along the road, select which of them a user wants to visit, and track the way toward them, making the trip much more interesting.

Each of these apps has its own unique features, but whether you can compete with them?

How to create your own?

Yes. There is plenty of room in the industry, and you can enter it. The most important point to compete successfully is to choose the app’s type, fill it with helpful features, and develop a UI based on the well-studied user’s behavior. If you’ll occupy a niche where there are no analogs such as Skyscanner, TripAdvisor, or Roadtripper, you’ll obtain your profits. 

Any ideas? It’s up to you to combine some travel apps’ features in a unique way, breaking limitations and flaws and opening new opportunities for people. We’ll show you some challenges and special features which can

In everything else, the travel apps development is similar to all other app types. Planning, market research, prototyping, minimum product testing, design, development, testing, and release – seven universal steps. Consider finding an appropriate company, which has a specialization in travel app building.

Challenges and opportunities

There is a perfect scholarly article with a deep analysis of them. Trip-planning apps have the specific idea that they should be perfect organizers for users while being interactive. You should deeply understand their behavior, as they will use them under 

Let’s list the challenges and describe which apps’ features can help overcome them.

• Communication with users and service owners is the essential element of the app’s interactivity. Adding such a feature to your app will certainly improve it and decrease users’ nervousness.
• Collaboration features are extremely useful, as the feeling of connection is crucial for travel. They include reviews, travel groups, and everything like that.
• Considering the time, travel app users are usually limited in it and should have all opportunities to make decisions quickly and without any flaws from the app’s side. 

Special features

Mentioned apps have all basic features, but what about special ones? Lastly, we’ll present a few examples for your inspiration.

• Visa planning, such as in the Travelscope web application, can be a fruity addition to the trip planning app.
• Document counter checks which documents are necessary for the trip and remind your users, saving their nerves.
• Digital certificates would enable people to load their COVID certificates, passports, visas, and other documents in one place, facilitating the border crossing. An example of an app that develops such features is Airside.
• Translation facilities, which could be based on image and voice recognition, to facilitate communication with foreigners.
• Cost estimator is a tool that would calculate all costs necessary for the trip, based on visas, tickets, and accommodation costs and average local prices.
• Insurance features would be another fruitful expansion, increasing travel safety and helping to comply with local norms of some countries, although their implementation requires familiarity with the specific insurance industry.

Conclusion: Travel apps future

Until people’s curiosity does not fade out, these apps will remain popular. Travel app development can be an interesting process with large perspectives for you, but you should manage to find your niche and occupy it. While apps that plan people’s travels are numerous, there are many issues with them, mostly connected to UI flaws, limitations, and a lack of flexibility. By solving them and using a unique combination of useful features, you can make your travel app project successful.

Travel app developers