What goes in building a great travel app?
There are hundreds of travel apps on Android and iOS, and the number of increasing day by day. It is estimated that travelers spend more than 35% of their mobile time on travel apps to plan their next vacation. Travel apps are of great importance as they make the journey much easier. More than 45% of travel bookings are made through travel apps. There is a need for quality apps as the number of people using travel apps is increasing drastically.
Travelers want their mobile devices to take care of everything. Whether it is booking tickets or finding restaurants nearby, traveler want things to happen directly from their devices. Travelling is not an easy task, unless there is someone with us who knows everything. Today, smartphones are considered as the best travel companions that know everything.
With so many travel apps on the store, it is not an easy job to build an app that stands on the top of the list. Not all travel apps on app store are successful and there are many travel apps that are not even noticed by people. If you want your travel app to stand out of other apps, you should consider making it unique. There are a number of factors to consider while building a travel app. In this post, we will have a look at some of the essentials of great travel app.
1. User friendly
The travel app should be easy to use and navigate. It should help users to find information without much effort. Nobody likes spending time on figuring out how to accomplish the goals. If you want the travel app to be user friendly, you should not overload it with huge volume of information.
If you go through some of the reputed travel apps like AirBnB, you will understand how easy they are to use. Travel app should make it easy to find what you are looking for in the app. Whether it is finding best hotels or booking tickets, the travel app should make it really easy to enter the mandatory information.
2. Communication
Communication is one of the must have features of travel app. Tourists move from one place to the other during their journey, and the only mode of communication they have is their smartphone. If the customer experiences any issue with the app during their travel, they will uninstall the app and probably never return back.
The travel app should be able to communicate with the customers from the beginning to guide through different processes. Moreover, it should allow the customer to reach out with reviews, questions, suggestions and concerns directly at their convenience. You will get invaluable customer insight by incorporating in-app communication.
3. Reviews, discounts and promotional offers
Reviews and rating is something that attracts customers. Travelers want to know the reviews of particular place, hotel or restaurant before going there. This feature helps to improve the services. This is one of the main reasons why reputed app like TripAdvisor gained huge fan following.
If you want to increase conversion rates, you should includediscounts and promotional offers in your app. They not only increase conversions, but retain a large amount of customer base. Offers and coupons should be easy to track and quick to implement, as it helps to drive loyal customers.
Social media integration is another other that enhances the user experience. Allow users to connect through their social media accounts to save deals. It also helps in simplifying the data and help users to fill the basic details automatically before placing the order.
4. Highly secured payment gateway
The most important thing to consider is the security of confidential information such as bank details, credit and debit card information etc. Whether it is travel app or any ecommerce app, one should allow users to make payment to use their service.
Online payments are preferred over COD as they are highly reliable and penetrated deeply into the market. Integrating a faster and reliable third party payment gateway into the travel app will help the transaction run smoothly. The number of abandoned transactions can be reduced to a great extent, which will eventually increase the transaction success rate.
5. Language translation & currency conversion
Language is one of the primary concerns for frequent travelers. It is not difficult for people to master in multiple languages. It is a daunting task to learn the language before starting the trip. To help the customer communicate easily in the travel destination, you must include a language translator in the app.
Similarly, currency conversion is one of the biggest problems for those who travel different countries. If you want to complete the travel app with all the essential features, it is must to include currency convertor. Your customer should not leave your app just because he/she want to know the exact currency exchange rate.
6. Geo location
We have heard hundreds of stories of people fooling travelers by showing wrong routes. With the advent of technology, people no more ask others to guide them. You must include maps of all locations along with accurate navigation. Geolocation help users toaccess all the nearby cafes, hotels, tourist attractions and hot spots.
The travel app should solve all the purposes and should not compel users to install some random app, just for the sake of finding routes. In other words, design the travel app in such a way that the travel don’t even think of closing the app.
Besides the above, there are a few features to add such as — weather forecast, user reviews, emergency numbers, itinerary creator, in-app cab booking facility, intelligent booking system etc that make traveling easy. Give the customers a comfortable search tool to find required information such as — popular sports, nearby hotels, big events in the city and other things.
Conclusion
Though travel apps are used only on the occasion, they are highly in demand and app companies confirm this, it is crucial for travel companies to stand out of other apps. Remember that ease of use, proper functionality, geolocation, currency conversion, language translator, reviews and in-app communication are the essentials of a great travel app. One must implement these essentials into the core logic for optimum travel experience.
Do you know any other essentials of a great travel app? Share your thoughts by commenting below!
