Features And Cost Estimation For Hotel Booking Apps

Everyone loves to enjoy the comfort of relaxing in a hotel room after an exhausting journey.

What else can be as relaxing as a quick check-in into a hotel room without having to go through lengthy paperwork or check-in protocols?

But in many cases, it can take quite a while in order to book a room as per your choice if you aren’t already using any Hotel booking application development services or products. Many startups have already made it convenient for frequent travelers for users, in general, to find and book the room as per their accommodation. It is indeed a flourishing business and various platforms are on verge of creating related applications sooner. In order to create an online hotel booking application, it is important to understand your business model and targeted users. in this article, we will learn about each of these dimensions in-depth along with the features and the cost to develop a hotel booking app.

The Business Models Of Hotel Booking Applications

Prior to starting any on-demand app development solution, it is extremely important to analyze the business models. It is because your product will not come to effect until it is backed by a sought-after business model and relevant strategies to fulfill the requirement of your targeted customers or users. In hotel booking applications there are mostly 4 different types of models, which are merchant, advertising, aggregator, and dedicated models. Let us learn about each one of them in brief:

• Merchant Business Model- With this model you can easily sign the hotel contract to receive the right number of rooms. Once the contract is signed, you can then sell all the rooms through your application to guests. Almost every PWA Development company uses this model, all thanks to the resourcefulness and wide reach of the companies.
   
• Aggregator Business Model- This model is quite simple and widely used for applications that are generally connected to online hotel booking services. When a user searches for a hotel room or a place to stay, a list of hotels with available rooms at various prices appears. Then, it gets easy for the user to choose the relevant option and satisfy their requirements with a hotel booking application.
   

This type of business model for any Hotel Booking System is suitable for customers who prefer comparing offers from various hotels. One of the major platforms that use this model for their hotel booking services is Booking.com.
 

• Advertising Business Model- This model is quite similar to the aggregator model as it also involves listing the rooms available at different offers. The difference between both models lies in how each of them makes money. The platforms used in this model earn their profits on the basis of pay-per-click services. The websites in this model make users visit the booking page of any accommodation provider. And when any provider receives a lead, the respective platform gets a certain amount for converting the user to its potential lead.
• Dedicated Business Model- The Dedicated Business Model is suitable for you if you have a number of regular customers and a well-established business. With this model, you can easily develop a hotel booking on-demand app development solution for your business. You can also provide a number of facilities like reserving rooms, concierge services, bonuses, loyalty programs, etc. to your customers.

The Core Features Of Hotel Booking Applications

Users will definitely have certain features in mind that they expect from your hotel booking app. It is the responsibility of a mobile application development company to make sure that even the basic model has the essential features so that users can easily access the application. If you want your customers to be engaged, it is important that they have all these features at their fingertips so that they can make quick and easy hotel reservations. Below you will find a list of core hotel booking app features that are worth considering. You can also upgrade your application with all of these features.

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• Hotel Search/Reservation - Searching for hotel rooms allows for users to plan a perfect stay. It is obvious that users do not want to go through thousands of hotel options and that's where the hotel booking criteria come in. These criteria include the location, number of guests, date of arrival, stay, etc and through all these factors, users can speed up their search process. The application must be able to allow users to select the city or region that they are going to, along with setting dates for their departure and pick up. Similarly, while making reservations, the application must allow users to highlight the number of individuals who are staying, including children or pets.
• Filters For Booking - We have seen how important it is to provide multiple features to users in a hotel booking app. It helps users narrow down their search and actively look for their requirements without wasting too much of their time. For example, the users may be looking for a budget-friendly option for hotels that are close to airports or bus stops. Also, filters or sorting options will allow business professionals to display their offers but it is important to change the order in which they are displayed on the screen.
   
• Personal Accounts - If you are willing to develop a hotel booking management solution then you can allow users to create their own personal accounts on your application. Any PWA Development company can do the required job with absolute efficiency and it will allow users to keep track of the available discounts on your application. Having their own user profiles will also help them to accept all the information about the latest deals for their upcoming bookings. You can turn this to your advantage by using users’ data to provide them with personalized offers or loyalty programs.

• Notification And Preview - Users will definitely appreciate your notion of providing pop-ups and notifications that can inform them of their booking information. You can send personalized traveling deals to your users with the help of push notifications as well. Through app notifications, you can inform the users about their check-in and check-out times, discounts, overheads, etc.
  
  Secondly, through room review, you can boost the conversion rates of your application. You can place the beautiful images of your hotel room and allow users to see and feel them. Other than the traditional gallery you can consider including 3D tours or virtual tours of the rooms.
   
• Payment Gateway - All the efforts can prove to be worthless if you don’t include a secure payment gateway for the users. Any payment gateway in the Hotel booking app development solution will allow users to make payments with a few clicks. The application can also take their credit card or debit card information to safeguard instant payments. You can integrate popular online payment gateway options like PayPal, Omise, Stripe, etc.
• Settings - You could be getting users from all over the world so it would be extremely convenient for them to use your application if you allow multilingual and multicultural support on it. It will give a user-friendly edge to your application and your users will be able to choose from the available services. Keep one thing in mind - the more features you will include in the app, the more convenient it will become for your users to use it.
   
• Review System And Interactive Interface - This is a much-highlighted feature that you can consider to have in your hotel booking application. The review/comment system is an obvious section that everyone looks at in any application before accessing the services. Basically, it is prioritized as per the customer authenticity and acts as a personal recommendation. While booking the hotel rooms, many users check for others’ opinions and experiences. You can also integrate an online chat feature in the application, enabling instant communication between customers and service managers. For this, you can include chat messages, documents, and image sharing options in the app.

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The more features your application supports, the more likely it is that your application will get featured in the list of the top applications in the online app stores.

Good Hotel Booking Features

If you are willing to create an advanced application to make your Hotel Booking System attractive for the users, go through this feature. It would be in the best interest of your platform once you have validated your hotel booking application. By reading all of these features, you can facilitate your clients at a fully-fledged level. Let us have a look at the necessary features:

• Flight Search And Booking Tickets- It is obvious that your users will definitely be coming from different corners of the world. Hence, you can provide flight search and ticket booking options to them. Alongside helping with lodging, you can provide an opportunity for travelers to book and organize their flight tickets as well.
• Car Rentals- If you can manage to have this feature in your application, it will give an advantage to your business. Try considering third-party car rental integration services with Uber or regional service providers. This will help your users to opt for car rentals as per their interests.
   
• Recommendation Engine- In order to create a multi-functional booking and traveling application, you can allow your users to get recommendations for nearby places, restaurants, and events to visit. With the help of GPS, they can enter their current location and get suggestions accordingly. All these solutions can be further accompanied by photos and videos of the places. Various on-demand app development solutions have already started integrating this feature into their applications.
   
• Analytics- Hotel booking apps should include analytical services on the back-end. Analytics can help your business analyze user behavior and monitor the effectiveness of your advertising campaigns and strategies. This will also help you get preferences as per every guest visiting your place. You can collect all this data and provide exceptional offers and loyalty programs to your users.
   
• Interactive Floor Plans- This segment in the hotel booking application has still not gained enough importance. Hotels do come in different layouts and sizes and it might be confusing for the users to navigate their way. Hence, to prevent your users from getting lost in or outside a hotel, you can provide an interactive floor plan with essential layouts in it. This will help them to understand the premises and it will also save time.

How Much Does It Cost To Develop A Hotel Booking Application?

In order to get an estimate of how much money you will require to create a hotel booking application, you have to understand the requirement per hour. This is because almost every mobile app development company follows the hourly basis of charging for creating the app. Considering the information of wireframing the hotel booking app you can get an estimate based upon the time spent on every feature and the technology stack. Also, the cost can be highly elected for popular mobile platforms, i.e. Android and iOS. We have provided a rough estimate for a hotel booking application on the website and in order to get the approximate cost you can multiply these numbers with the hourly rate of your developers. 

For must-have features:

• Hotel Search And Reservation- For iOS and Android it requires 10 to 24 hours and for websites, it requires 16 to 24 hours.
• Filters- For iOS and Android it requires 10 to 22 hours and for websites, it requires 10 to 16 hours.
• Personal Accounts- For iOS and Android it requires 15 to 30 hours and for websites, it requires 16 to 24 hours.
• Room Previews- For iOS and Android it requires 8 to 30 hours and for websites, it requires 8 to 15 hours.
• Notifications- For iOS and Android it requires 10 to 30 hours and for websites, it requires 16 to 24 hours.
• Payment Gateway- For iOS and Android it requires 10 to 40 hours and for websites, it requires 20 to 44 hours.
• Settings- For iOS and Android it requires 10 to 24 hours and for websites, it requires 16 to 24 hours.

Hence, based on the above-mentioned criteria, any PWA Development company will require a total of 65 to 190 hours for Android, 100 to 200 for iOS, and 100-250 for websites.

For Good Features

For good features, it would cost you in the same manner and you can get a rough estimate by multiplying the hours with the developer's rate.

• Flight Search And Reservations - iOS requires 10 to 12, Android 10 to 24 hours, and for websites, 24 to 40 hours.
• Car Rental - 24 to 48 for iOS, Android requires 24 to 30 hours, and for websites, 24 to 40 hours.
• Recommendation Engine - 18 to 42 for iOS 18 to 42, Android requires 24 to 40 hours, and for websites, 28 to 44 hours.
• Analytics - 4 to 10 for iOS, Android requires 8 to 12 hours, and for websites, 16 to 32 hours.
• Interactive Floor Plan - 10 to 42 for iOS, Android requires 30 to 46 hours, and for websites, 15 to 40 hours

Hence, iOS development will require 60 to 140 hours, Android development will require 19 to 200 hours, and web development will require 100-200 hours. It is also recommended to add the core features of the application in order to launch MVP. Once you update your application, it gets easy to add various other features to it. Hence, it is always recommended to hire a top-notch mobile app development company that can help you to get an excellent product that is worth the investment.

The Alternative Approach To Hotel Booking App Development

The actual cost of a hotel booking application entirely depends upon the features and stages that you require to include in the app. For example, the two most prominent stages of a hotel booking app are iPhone and Android and both of them highlight the app continuation. And if the application requires changes, then it becomes expensive for the platform to bear the charges of making all the changes. 

Additionally, the overall expense of creating the application is highly influenced by the factors in which it is developed. The expenses of the localities differ from the charges for outsourcing the solution.

• US-based engineers charge around $100 to $200 per hour
• Eastern Europe-based engineers charge around $100 to $180 per hour
• Indian engineers charge around $10 to $70 per hour

The overall development of hotel booking applications can cost you around $10000 to $20000 for an average application. If you are willing to make an application that is enriched with advanced features, then the cost may increase further.

Conclusion

Hotel booking applications have the potential to simplify lodging for various users. A large number of Hotel Booking System is set to adapt to the forward-thinking of hospitality services. This is further stretched with the mobile-first approach in order to deliver ultimate user experiences and achieving maximum brand advocacy for the platforms. You can easily break into the industry with your incredible absolution and assign any app development team to bring your project to life.