In the blog post, we have included information for travel tech startups and entrepreneurs. After reading this blog, you will be familiar with the strategies of Booking.com and a few main features to consider while you develop your own travel booking app like Booking.com.

Thinking twice to arrange a small trip has long become a thing of the past. These days, we have the mobiles with travel booking apps making the task easier for us, thanks to technology. Booking a trip, may it be just for a short 2-day travel or a long 1-month stay, booking the flights and hotels has been brought to your fingertips.

Here is a chart from Sensortowers which shows the top 10 travel apps in Europe being downloaded from App store, Google play and overall. We can see the Booking ranking first.

The below graph shows the Google Play rank for Booking.com in Travel and Local category is 4th, its usage rank can be seen 11th.

Here is a graph for App Annie that shows the ranking of Booking.com app in the last week in the category of travel and overall.

What is Booking.com?

Booking.com is a travel fare aggregator website and travel booking app. It is also a travel meta-search engine for lodging reservations. Booking.com has its headquarters in Amsterdam. The website and app have over 28,425,726 listings in around 148,470 destinations in about 228 countries and territories.

The travel booking app was founded in 1996 by Geert-Jan Bruinsma. However, it was later merged with Booking Online which was founded by Sicco and Alec Behrens, Marijn Muyser and Bas Lemmens which operated as Bookings.org. Later the name was changed back to Booking.com. The company was brought by the Priceline group (Booking Holdings) in 2005. Booking.com is available in more than 40 languages and guarantees the best prices for any type of properties.

Booking.com also allows users to book flights, cars, and airport taxis.

In a report from Statista, the revenue of Booking Holdings worldwide was around $12.68 US dollars. Here is a graph that shows the revenue of Booking Holdings from 2007-2017.

4 features of Booking.com that have made it the best travel booking app and these features can be considered while developing a travel booking app:

1. Search for all kinds of properties at one place

Creating a travel booking app requires the “search” feature is one of the core features to consider. This feature is the heart of the application. If the user is looking for a hotel, motel or a holiday home, the feature must be easily visible and simple to handle. The user-friendliness of this feature will let the customers choose you over other travel booking apps.

While searching for the best available options, the users should be presented with the expected choices as per their requirements. While planning to build an app like Booking.com, make sure your search feature works as smoothly as possible and provides results within a few seconds.

2. Improved Filters

The filters allow users to perform a seamless transaction on the travel booking app. While searching for things related to their travel, the users must be enabled to apply certain filters while searching for budget, number of persons, hotels or motels on the basis of reviews and services available. When they apply these filters, the search that fits in the applied filters should be displayed. These filters save the users trouble of going through the entire listing to find a suitable place to stay.

The travel booking app should search for the options fit for the user after applying the filters by running certain algorithms on the search feature and display the best possible listings for the users.

The user can apply filters like the price of the room, the number of people staying, check-in and check-out dates, type of hotel room, etc.

3. Managing bookings on the go:

A user is enabled to manage their bookings on the app in a hassle-free way. They can make changes in the bookings whenever they want to. They can get paperless confirmations regarding their bookings.

The users get to contact their host and view their check-in times. The Booking.com site and app allows the travelers to write reviews and rate services for the hosts. The app allows easy in-app payments with credit cards or online wallets. They do not charge a booking or credit card fees.

4. Multilingual and Global currency support and attractive deals

Localization of your travel booking app is important because having an app in their own language engages the users better than having an app in some other language. The users are able to connect better with the app supporting their own language.

Global currency support is essential to manage payments worldwide. While developing a travel booking app, you must consider this feature if you wish to introduce the app worldwide. Lastly, about the deals, they are to keep users engaged and attracted to your travel booking app and increase your customers through word of mouth.

The best strategy that Booking.com followed for its success was being the first one in the competition. However, there are many other travel booking apps who have joined the competition and made it huge. One of them is Klook.

Why choose Coruscate to Build Travel Booking app like Booking.com?

We can help you build an amazing travel booking app and help you make it land amongst the best travel booking apps across the world. The travel industry is growing far and wide and the travel booking apps with some out of the box features are always in demand.

We can develop such an extraordinary app for your business based on your unique requirements. Our research team can help you while choosing some really amazing features for your app once you connect with us for a free consultation.

We are trusted by all our clients and have a record of 100% success in all our projects. We have entertained over 2000 queries from the travel sector and many a few successful applications for our happy clients. Connect with us through below button for a free demo or price estimation.

Also read:

• How travel booking app helps your travel Business to Grow?
• The action plan of Lola.com business travel app that you can follow which has helped it to raise $37M funding
• How to Build AI-based Travel App Like Hopper for & Hotels Booking?

The post Travel booking app development: 4 main features of Booking.com app that have made it the best app for booking travel appeared first on Coruscate Solutions.

The technology is gaining popularity in the travel and tourism industry with each passing day. However, the tourism industry is moving towards becoming one of the world’s largest sector with a global economic contribution.

The travel and tourism industry has been experiencing steady growth every year across the world. The growth of the travel industry has increased from 528 million in the year 2005 to 1.19 billion in the year 2015. According to Statista, these figures are expected to exceed 1.8 billion by 2030.

Another report from Statista states that in the year 2016, the economic contribution of the travel industry was recorded more than 7.6 trillion U.S. dollars.

According to the Allied Market Research, the global business market trends have been changing every year. In the year 2017, the global business travel market was worth $1,304 billion. It is expected to reach $1,657 billion by 2023, registering a CAGR of 4.1% during the period of the years 2017 to 2023.

Corporate customers have always been a huge marketplace for the travel industry. A business travel startup company called Lola.com has contributed trillion-dollars to the travel industry with its innovative approach. A recent report in CrunchBase states that Lola.com has raised $37 million in Series C round of funding, led by Accel and General Catalyst and has reinvented the scope of business travel app.

Here is a graph of digital travel sales worldwide from 2014 to 2020:

What is Lola.com?

There was a time when the frequent business travelers felt frustrated due to the complications they used to face during their travel. With the recent innovations in the travel industry, Lola.com came as an idea from the travel innovators Paul M. English and Bill O’ Donnell.

It was founded in the year 2015 as a corporate travel management software. The company is based in Boston, Massachusetts. The website operates as a travel agency model which is used for booking services for business and searches information related to hotel and flights. Using Lola.com is fun as it is stress-free and very easy to manage your business travel.

There was a time when people struggled with the difficult websites which had restrictive and heavy-handed travel policies. Such type of travel plans used to make the employees overwhelmed about traveling as they had to do every single thing themselves.

Lola.com offers a simple and smart way to plan your business travels. It allows the managers to have complete visibility and help them to keep the employees on the same page. So, the company can keep a tab on the expenses during travel and also maintain the guidelines at the same time keep everyone happy.

Also Read : How travel booking app helps your travel Business to Grow?

Lola.com allows the employees to book hotels and flights as per their convenience avoiding the lock-ins. They are able to collaborate with their teammates and travel without any stress on their shoulders. Lola has its expert consultants available 24/7 to help the travellers whenever and wherever they need them.

Lola Pricing

The prices available at Lola are the same prices that are available if you book directly with the hotels. There is no extra service charge at Lola’s end. Thus, there is no chance of getting robbed with Lola.

Lola is all about making the best business travels. This business travel app has a managed travel policy where the traveller’s needs and their company’s requirements are all fulfilled. This is how the business travel app explains the fun for both the travellers and the businesses.

The strategies of Lola.com that you can use while building your own business travel app

The unique business strategy followed:

The business travel app follows a unique business strategy. The online platform is only for corporate users to book and manage their trips hassle-free. There are a lot of travel booking apps and businesses available in the market. However, to distinguish itself from the crowd, Lola.com follows a unique approach in its endeavors. The corporate travel app, Lola.com, works only for business travel and wants to grow with the same in order to tighten its business roots. Also, the business travel app provides solutions for corporate users only.

2. Digging deep to know about the problems of business travellers:

Another strategy that took Lola.com to the next level was finding out the pain points of the target audience. The business-focused travel booking app has tried solving the problems for frequent business travellers. The business travel booking app offers its users a platform which takes the stress away from the life of users and makes the bookings easier than ever for the corporate travellers. This platform removes the middleman involvement like the travel agents to handle and manage the process of booking flights and hotels. It also allows the modifications in cases of flight delays etc.

Lola.com offers a smart way to travel over the traditional time-consuming and irritating travel booking options. Opting for this business travel app removes the technical issues faced by the busy corporate travellers and enables them to be more focused on the necessary tasks.

3. Know your target audience:

The most important strategy while launching any app is knowing the consumers who will be using the app and how to attract them. Having knowledge about your customers and their requirements help to grow any business in very less time. You don’t need to be the Jack of all trades. Like Lola.com, you too can focus on a specific audience to sell your product. As Lola.com is focusing only on corporate travellers, the audience knows which app to look for while they plan their business trip.

As a travel startup, there is a wide scope for you if you focus on corporate customers. You can use uniques strategies to make your corporate travel booking business a huge success.

While reading the above-mentioned strategies, you might have got some ideas to get your own app like Lola.com. Of course, you can imbibe the about strategies in your own app but there has to be so unique selling point for your app that attracts the audience.

At Coruscate, we can help you to build a unique business travel booking app to make a great impact and reach thousands of business travellers. We have the expertise in building apps that are designed as per the specific requirements of our clients. If you have an idea for building a travel booking app, we can validate your ideas.

We have built over 2000 mobile apps for different fields and more than 500 for travel itself. Our expertise will make your app adorn peculiar features which can compete with all other travel apps and have the cross-platform ability, multi-lingual support, push notifications, payment gateway integration, and online support. Connect with us to know further and let us help your travel business to prosper.

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