How Much Does The Development Of Hotel Booking App Cost?

Over the last few decades, various industries have gone digitized including food, clothing, beauty, and travel industry is no different than them. Globally, the travel industry is putting in a lot of effort to create a robust online presence. People discover new destinations, plan trips, and review their journeys using mobile apps related to travel. All of this has become an essential part of the travel market.

What is the market that can make this whole possess of booking and traveling easier than a mobile app? From planning a trip to getting advice, from booking flight tickets to hotel rooms, hotel booking apps are doing wonders and providing users with an incredible experience.

Since the hotel and traveling industry is growing by leaps and bounds worldwide, people in this business are considering if they should be spending money on creating a hotel booking app. If yes, how much does it cost to make a hotel booking app?

So, if you are someone from the related industry or a developer fulfilling his client's need by making a hotel booking app for his business, this blog rightly fits your information need. This blog will help you understand all the aspects of hotel booking app development costs. Let's begin with the bog!

What is a Hotel Booking App?

Before knowing what it costs to create a hotel booking app, you must first know what it is. A hotel booking app is a software application that allows its users to easily access different hotels, plan their duration of stay, plan their travel, check rooms' prices, choose room type, get room confirmation, and cancel whenever they want.

These apps are not only helpful for users by making them book hotels for their trip at the ease of their homes but are also proving helpful for hotel owners. These applications provide their businesses with solid marketing, tracking their customers and using the feedback they get for good. It also benefits hotel owners by providing 10% to 15% of the profit on a successful reservation each time.

Top Hotel Booking Apps in the Market

Top hotel booking apps in the market are: 
 

• Booking.com
• Expedia
• Kayak
• Priceline
• Agoda
• Trivago

Developing a Hotel Booking Mobile Application- A Basic Guide

When you are developing a hotel booking app, you have two options:

• You can assign the complete project to the development team.
• You understand and know the whole process and start doing it yourself.

In either case, the following is the process for it:

1. Work on the primary concept of your app, conduct market research, and do competitor analysis.
2. You must develop a Unique Value proposition for your app and select distribution channels and platforms for it.
3. Do prototyping and wireframing of your app before you start building up your app.
4. Work on the UI and UX design of your app to provide your users with a seamless experience while using your app.
5. The development process of your app includes its integration with booking engines, payment gateways, hotel management systems, customer relationship management, and other related software.
6. Keep on testing your app to ensure it's smooth working.
7. Devise a market strategy to widen your market reach.
8. Publish your app on the platform you have designed it for.

Monetization Models for Hotel Booking Mobile App

Before you hire a developer to develop a hotel booking app, you must understand the monetization models available for such apps.

Aggregator Model

The Aggregator Model is widely used in the hotel industry. It is a type of e-commerce business model in which the aggregator (the firm) collects data from different relevant sources offering services like online room booking services and reservation platform and display that information on their app.

A hotel booking mobile application is linked with other online booking platforms and provides its users with a list of options available for them to choose from. Once the user has selected the hotel he wants to book, the app redirects the user to the hotel booking website or application. This model is better than other models because it helps users to compare the prices of different hotels.

Merchant Model

If you are adopting the Merchant Model for your hotel booking app, you are expected to sign a contract with hotels where you will be offering bookings. You get the right to a certain number of rooms displayed in your application to get reserved by your users. By doing so, you can generate a good amount of revenue by offering room bookings in different cities, countries, or states.

Let’s say a hotel with which you have signed a contract provides a room at $70, but you put that up on your app at $100, the hotel will be getting those exact $70, and you will get the rest of $30.

Advertising Model

Just like the Aggregator Model, the Advertising Model also brings different rooms from different hotels for its users. However, the significant difference between the Aggregator Model and the Advertising Model is that in the Advertising Model, revenue is generated via pay-per-click. Whereas in the case of the Aggregator Model, revenue is generated when the conversion of lead turns to a guest.

Dedicated Model

The Dedicated Model is best suited for established hotels with many repeated or loyal customers.

Through this model, you can develop a hotel booking app for a chain of hotels and resorts you own and offer benefits to your loyal customers. In this model, you can provide as many services in the application as you want your customers to have.

Must-Have Features for Your Hotel Booking App

Since now you are aware of the monetization models you can adopt for your hotel booking app, and its success rate now is the time for you to look for features you must have in your app.

User App

User Account

The user is required to create an account to use the app. A user account can also be known as a user dashboard that provides them with a customized experience by sharing their details with them, viewing previous bookings, planning visits, and creating wish lists.

Search

Depending on the business model, you can enable your user through your app to look for hotels according to their preferences o location, date, and time. There must be a date picker and select a city option through which the user can set his arrival and departure date.

Result Filteration

A user must be able to filter out the result more precisely based on their hotel ratings, price, etc. This will help them find the ideal hotel in terms of costs and other preferences.

Overview of Hotel

All the necessary details about the hotel, including deals, hotel rooms, availability, and essential information about the hotel, can be found using this feature. It lets the app admin help users with the booking process by guiding them through every step.

Multi-Language and Timezone Support

If you want your hotel booking app to be available worldwide, you must have multiple languages and time zones supporting your application. This will provide our users with a more personalized and easeful experience. 

Secure Payment Gateway

To avoid any fraud and loss, your app must have a secure means of payment gateway. This will keep the hotelier and the customers safe and protected from any loss.

Appropriate Accommodation View

Your app must provide its users with videos, pictures, and a 3D view tour of the room to make them know if the room fits in with their preferences.

Cancellation and Refund

There must be a flexible yet transparent approach towards the cancellation of any booking, whether charges will deduct from a cancellation or if the refund will fully refund the customer.

Hotelier Account

There must also have a dashboard for hoteliers, which could provide them with a personalized experience by allowing them to review and confirm bookings, verify payment status and manage hotel accounts.

Push Notifications

The push notification feature is highly recommended by users as it notifies them of booking status, check-in, check-out, discounts, and the like.

Hotel Employee App

Job Notification

This feature will provide the employee with the job notification they have been assigned. The job can either get automatically accepted by any employee or it depends on a first-accept basis.

Availability

It lets the employee update their available or not available status.

Job History

This enables the employee to see their job details, the room no. assigned to them and the guest they are currently providing the services.

Sign-in/Log-in/Change Password/Change Profile

The employee will be able to Sign-In/Log-In or edit their profile.

Hotel Admin App

Dashboard

This feature allows the admin to check all the jobs in progress, the best employees as per their ratings, their time of service, and so on.

Rooms Add/Edit/Delete

Hotel rooms are edited based on their availability.

Add Guests

Using his feature, the admin gets to create an account for guests. Once done, it sends an email to the guest to create their account and download it.

Search Guests by ID

This allows the admin to look for the guest using his ID and email address.

Assign Guests to Room

Admin assigns the room to guests based on room availability and their days of stay.

Order History

This enables the admin to check the history of orders of each guest and their duration of stay. This makes it easy for the admin to check if there is any pending bill against any guest.

Hotel Employees

This is where the admin of the app creates an account for all of their employees. Once the employee login to the created account, it will enable the admin to check their availability or unavailability.

Super Admin App

Dashboard

Through this feature, the super admin gets to see all the stats like the number of services provided in a day and how many orders are processed.

User Listing

This allows the admin to see a list of users who signed up, a list of their orders, and edit the user’s detail or disable a user.

Hotels Listing

Through this feature, the super admin will be able to view all hotel owners, filter hotels, approve hotels, and check hotel stats.

Advanced Features

Some other worth considering features while you are developing your hotel booking app are: 

• Social signup or login
• Cost forecasting
• Personalized recommendation engine
• Currency converter
• In-app travel guide
• Loyalty programs
• Virtual tours
• Car rental
• In-app navigation

Technology Stack for Hotel Booking App

With the day-to-day changing world of technology, you must choose the right technology stack for your hotel booking app development to make it a success.

In this section of the blog, we have listed a few of them:
 

• Programming Language for App Development- JavaScript, Python, React Native, TypeScript, Kotlin (Android App), Swift (iOS), Xamarin.
• Data Storage and Cache- Amazon S3, Google Cloud Storage, Digital Ocean Spaces, IBM Cloud Object Storage, Backblaze, Cloudian HyperStore.
• Desktop-based UI- Electron, Chromium Embedded Framework (CEF), Node Webkit.
• HTTP and Proxy Server- HAProxy, Apache Tomcat, Varnish, Caddy.
• Primary Platform Structure- Google Cloud Platforms or Dataproc.
• Real-time Analytics- Hadoop, BigData, IBM, Cisco, Spark.
• Payment Integration- PayPal, eWallets, Stripe, Braintree.
• SMS, Phone Verification, and Voice- Nexmo and Twilio.
• Push Notification- Push, io, and Twilio.
• Aggregator APIs- Expedia Affiliate Network API and ZUMATA Hotel Booking API.
• Maps- Google Maps API, Location IQ, Mapbox, Openlayers.
• Nearby Destinations- Bing Maps API, Google Places API, MapBox, OpenLayers.
• Cloud Environment- Microsoft Azure, AWS, Google Cloud, IBM Cloud, Oracle, Salesforce.
• Streaming Media System- Adobe Media Server, Helix Universal Server, Red5.

Team Members Required for Hotel Booking App Development

To make a project successful, it is required to have a completely experienced team who can transform your idea of an app into reality. For developing your hotel booking app, the following are the team members required:

• Business Analysis Team
• Project Manager
• Android or iOS Developer or both
• Front and Back-End Developers
• QA Engineers

Factors Affecting the Cost of Hotel Booking App Development

These involve certain factors which mainly affect the overall hotel booking app development cost which is:

• Development company/team
• Platform of development
• Features
• Post-development maintenance

Development Company/Team

When you are hiring a team for your hotel booking app development, there come various elements that you must consider including the location of the company, the language of developers, and timezone differences if outsourcing. For that reason, there comes a lot of cost differences between development companies and teams. As in the above table, it can be seen that there exists a difference in cost between North America and Western Europe.

Before hiring any company or team, you must conduct full-fledged research. Companies put their client’s reviews and feedback, info about their completed projects, and a lot more. You can test these claims by going through their available apps in the market. However, the exact cost for your project can be calculated once you contact the company or team, and discuss your complete project with them.

Platform of Development

The platform for which you want to develop your hotel booking app is also an important determinant in deciding the cost. If you want to build an Android app or iOS app, it will be decided based on your business needs. Developing an operating system requires a different set of skills and techniques, thus it costs differently. For example, if you are getting your hotel booking app made by Vizteck, it will work on operating systems like iOS 9, iOS 10, and Android Operating System 5+.

If you are building an app for a local hotel for which you will be targeting local customers, you are going to research if the majority of the people using your app are Android or iOS users. Let's say you are building an app for some hotel in Asia, majority of the people out there are Android users, so the cost of your hotel booking app will vary from the iOS app.

Variety of Features

Hotel reservation and bookings, user login/sign-in, user dashboard, hotelier dashboard, filters, room previews, push notification, payment gateways, hotel information, booking, and cancellation are the features that any hotel booking app usually has. Each one of these features requires a different amount of time and effort by developing to add to your hotel booking app and thus affects the cost.

Post-Development Maintenance

Once your app is developed, it is not the end of the story. Your app requires continuous maintenance afterwards. With changing times and requirements of users, you might need to upgrade a feature or add a new one. So, to keep pace with it all, your app needs maintenance which expects a specific budget.

Hotel Booking App Development Cost

Considering the above-explained factors which affect the cost of development of a hotel booking app, if built from scratch by Vizteck Solutions, you will get your project completed in 3 months at $20,000. However, the cost may vary slightly based on scale, requirements, and project complexity. On average, it is expected to have a minimum of 8-10 developers for tasks including project planning and quality assurance.

If you are taking the services of Vizteck for your hotel booking app development, the cost mentioned above will include the complete UI and graphics of the app. However, the hosting charges aren't included in it. However, the milestones for payment are divided into four parts sections.

Different countries offer different average rates for hotel booking app development. In these countries, charges are based on an hourly basis.

Sr. No.Countries Hourly Rates1.North America $100-1502.Western Europe$45-753.Eastern Europe$20-354.Asia Pacific$15-20

Final Thoughts

Building apps like hotel booking systems is a challenging but worth contributing project for an IT firm. Vizteck Solutions is one such firm that could deliver you the best hotel booking app meeting your requirements. Our developers with years of experience and expertise in the area will meet all your app demands throughout the process of development

FAQs

How Much Does It Cost To Build A Booking App?

The cost of developing a booking app depends on various factors like the industry, features, development company, and maintenance. However, if you are building a hotel booking app, it can cost you around $20,000.

How Does A Hotel Booking App Work?

Step 1: The user search for and books the hotel in which he wants to stay.

Step 2: The availability of rooms is checked across the system.

Step 3: The user then gets the confirmation with an email about the successful booking and the related details.

Step 4: The request is reviewed and promo codes are sent to users to keep them brought back to your app and the hotel.

Is It Expensive To Publish An App On Google Play Store?

Google Play Store has set up different costs for different uses when it comes to publishing an app. By hiring an Android app developer, this process can become a little easy for you. However, Google charges $25 as a one-time publishing fee.