How to Develop a Hotel Booking App – A Comprehensive Guide

Market Overview of the Hotel Booking Industry

• The online travel booking market size is expected to reach $833 billion in 2025.
• A report from Statista states that online sales are expected to generate 73% of revenue in the travel and tourism sector by 2026.
• 68% of total sales in travel and tourism came online in 2022.
• Airbnb has the largest market capitalization in the online travel company market with 91.22 billion USD followed by Booking.com with 98,521 million USD
• Booking.com earned the title of most globally visited travel and tourism website in May 2022 with a total of 564 million visits.
• 39% of users are in favor of downloading apps as compared to mobile websites because of the speed.
• 30% of the users will prefer the increased functionality of the travel booking mobile app.
• 20% of users downloaded travel booking mobile apps due to better user experience.
• 48% of mobile phone users are in favor of booking and planning a trip to a new place using their mobile devices.
• A report by TripAdvisor states that 96% of users would like to complete their booking process after reading reviews.
• According to a report, there were more than 132,228 hotels and motels in 2022 in the US alone.

Needless to say, these stats prove the importance of a hotel booking mobile app. Whether it’s about attracting guests on a regular basis, improving the customer experience & revenue, boosting brand loyalty, improving staff efficiency, or simplifying operations, you need a hotel booking app.

Types of Hotel Booking Apps

Before diving into the development process you must be aware of your requirement as there are a few types of hotel booking apps to choose from.

• Hotel Chain Apps: These types of apps are specifically created for a particular hotel or a chain of hotels. So a user can only book a room inside that chain. Hilton Honors, AccorHotels, Marriott Bonvoy, and so on come in these categories.
• Hotel Aggregators: The purpose of these apps is to aggregate hotel data and provide it to users worldwide. TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com, and so on come into this category.
• Online Travel Agencies (OTAs): These apps offer online services with a focus on providing multiple booking capabilities. Whether it’s Hotels, cars for rent, flight tickets, etc. These apps offer all under a single roof. Trip.com, Hopper, KAYAK, etc are some of the prominent examples of this category.

6 Essential Features of a Hotel Booking App

Needless to say, features play a major role in the user’s experience on your platform, so you are required to add features that not only serve the basic purpose but will also allow users to enjoy a seamless hotel room booking experience.

1. Hotel Account

There must be a hotel account where users can able to access all information related to hotel/hotels like location, parking, amenities, services, prices, availability of rooms, deals & offers, food & drinks menu, and so on

2. Search Parameters

Your hotel room booking app must be capable enough to offer various search parameters to users. Whether it’s a city or place of visiting, dates of checking-in and out, number of members along with the user, number of rooms a user is looking for, accommodation of a pet if any, and so on.

3. Booking & Cancellation

Once a user has decided to make a booking, you are required to offer a safe payment gateway for making a payment. You must include multiple payment gateways so that the users will be able to pay through a debit card, credit card, Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and so on without any issues.

Apart from this, most quality hotel booking apps offer full refunds if cancellation is requested within 24 hours of booking. In another case, some apps have cancellation charges. So you can decide on the same.

Also Read: A Comprehensive Guide to Create a Custom Payment Gateway

4. A Complete View of Accommodation

Users will not be able to decide whether to book a room or not until they will be provided with a clear view of accommodation. So it becomes essential to upload high-quality images to create a rapport for booking on the spot.

5. Customer Account

Your app must offer a dedicated user account section where users will be able to select their wishlist, preferred language, currency, view booking history, discounts & offers, and so on. This will offer more personal experience.

6. Ratings & Reviews

This is one of the crucial features that can help you close the deal right on the spot. In the online world, users prefer to go for reviews and ratings before closing a deal. This feature can not only draw more customers but can also help you overcome shortcomings or drawbacks.

Advanced Features of Hotel Booking App

There are many other smart features that can help your hotel booking app offer a rich user experience. Some of these features include estimated cost forecast as per season and offers, a recommendation engine based on previous history or searches, a virtual tour of the hotel for an enhanced experience, an inbuilt currency & language converter, an analytics dashboard for the admin, push notifications for regular updates, CRM integration for a home-like experience, and other marketing tools like Chatbots, social media marketing and so on.

Additional Features of a Hotel Booking App

Apart from the advanced features you can also go with additional features that can offer you a competitive edge over your market competitors. You can include taxi booking, places to explore nearby, hotel comparison, restaurant booking, trip organizer, and other such features to maximize user experience.

Also Read: How Hotel Booking App Like OYO Earns? Revenue Model Decoded

7 Steps To Develop a Hotel Booking App

Hotel booking software development is a complex process that varies as per the approach. You can either go with ready-to-use software that will cost you less or with custom software that will cost more but will be based on your specific business needs. Here we will discuss the custom hotel app development in detail as this solution is in demand due to high ROI.

Step 1: Thorough Market Research

Before you dive into the hotel booking web or mobile app development, you are required to go for proper market research. This will provide you with basic information on what the current market trends are, what your potential audience expects from your app, and what your competitors are into. This will help you get a clear idea of what you want.

Step 2: Hiring the Best Hotel Booking App Development Company

Once you are done with the research process, you are required to put some effort into hiring experienced hotel booking app developers. It is better to go with a company. A seasoned development agency will not only offer you a competitive app but will also suggest you make necessary changes that can help your app perform better. 

Step 3: Design Phase

Once the project is discussed in detail, the agency will go for a wireframe. After the wireframe, designers will begin making mockups of your hotel booking platform. They will consider previous stage wireframes, project requirements, and advanced UI/UX methodologies to create a hi-tech prototype as per your business requirement.

Step 4: Development Phase

This consists of transforming eye-catching mockups into a workable hotel booking app. The developers will put their coding skills into action to develop an app that is not only capable of running smoothly but also offers a rich user experience.

Step 5: Quality Assurance

No matter how expert a person is, there is a possibility of errors. This is where QA engineers come in. They will perform multiple tests to make sure that the software is free of any bugs or errors and is meeting international quality standards. Once the testing is completed they will approve the software for the final release.

On the other hand, if certain major issues were found, a bug report will be generated and the hotel booking app will go back to the developers for necessary changes. The testers will test the software again for its quality and will only pass once they are satisfied with the changes.

Step 6: Final Release

Once your hotel booking application is polished, it will be launched in the target market for initial feedback. A dedicated team will take care of the feedback and make necessary changes in the app if any as per the customer’s demand.

Step 7: Update & Maintenance

The development process does not end with the final launch. The hotel booking application demands regular updates and maintenance to beat the market competition and stay on top.

Wrapping Up

With the increase in traveling activity around the world, the need for online hotel booking apps has seen a massive surge. A reason why hotel booking applications are in huge demand. But when it comes to ROI, many apps fail to reach targets. This is due to various reasons. The prime reason among them is the hiring of the wrong hotel booking app development agency that fails to beat the international app development standards.

The right hotel booking software development agency can not only provide you with an efficient solution but also guide you with practically workable suggestions. Apptunix is a seasoned mobile app development company capable of offering competitive app development solutions. It has successfully delivered hotel booking app projects to both local and global clients. So this time it can be your turn to make some waves in the hotel booking app segment.