Mobile applications for hotels are a powerful marketing tool for interacting with guests. They expand business opportunities, attract new customers, and make it easier for guests to communicate with the hotel. Introducing new technologies will help scale the business and make it even more attractive. That’s why hotel booking application development is gaining more and more popularity.

General Overview To Hotel Booking App Development

Applications for hotels greatly simplify the interaction between the business and guests. They help the hotel to tell about itself, show its rooms, conveniently book a room or get answers to all questions. A well-designed application attracts new guests and retains regular customers.

Each application is developed individually for a business, and the right set of tools is selected to help you get the maximum benefit. The main thing is to make a convenient tool for the client and a profitable tool for the hotel. The market size of online travel booking was $432 billion in 2020, and it is expected to reach $833 billion in 2025.

What is hotel booking app development?

It allows travelers to select their ideal getaway in one convenient place easily. Users are empowered with access to detailed information about hotels and rooms, allowing them to make informed decisions that best suit users’ needs!

Read Also: How to Build a Hotel Booking Engine? [Complete Guide]

Hotel booking app development is a series of steps and stages to create a high-performing and valuable solution for hotels and their customers. We will tell you more about all the main stages and processes of hotel booking app development later in the article.

The main types of hotel booking apps

There are many different types of hotel booking applications. Let’s look at the main ones:

• Hotel aggregators. Customers can access a vast selection of hotels across the globe with industry-leading hotel aggregators such as TripAdvisor, Hotels.com & Booking.com, providing comprehensive information for informed decision-making during their travel plans.

• Hotel chain applications. Hotel chain apps are revolutionizing today’s travel experience, allowing users convenience and ease when booking accommodations. Top hotel chains such as Oyo, Hilton Honors, and Marriott have created their own applications to provide customers with a premier service.

• Online travel agencies. Using such apps, travelers can select from a wide array of cost-effective trip arrangements. Top online travel companies like MakeMyTrip and Expedia allow customers to reserve flights, accommodations, car rentals, as well as tours around famous sites without any hassles – making global mobility effortless!

10 Steps to Successful Hotel Booking App Development

To make it simpler for you to understand what the hotel booking app development process should look like, we suggest you take a look at the step-by-step guide that we have prepared for you:

Step 1: Formulate a clear idea of your app

The first thing you should start hotel booking app development with is to formulate an idea. It should be clear, without personal details. You must clearly understand what you want to get as a result. In order to successfully develop a hotel booking app, you must describe all the possible aspects of your application and, as a result, proceed to test your idea.

Read Also: Custom Enterprise Software Development: Everything You Need to Know

Step 2: Test your idea

The next step is to test your idea. First, analyze your top competitors and compare your app idea with theirs. Highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each competitor. This will help you in the future when designing and developing functionality. We also advise you to pay attention to the reviews of the applications. Learn what people like and don’t like, what people use and don’t, etc. You can conduct a survey among users of such applications and thus test your idea.

Step 3: Choose a monetization strategy

There are many options here. For example, you can use a service fee and charge a fee for every booking made through your app. You can also use a subscription. For example, when buying subscriptions, users get more profitable deals and offers. There is also an advertising option. You can place ads in your application, thereby getting paid for it.

Step 4: Hire a booking app development team

The next step is to find and hire a hotel booking app development team. Most likely, you will need the following specialists in the team:

• Project Manager (PM)
• Business Analyst (BA)
• UI/UX designers
• Developers
• Tech and design leads
• QA

RewiSoft can provide your company with a talented, highly experienced and skillful dedicated development team. With our team extension services, you may enhance your development skills, get new technological experience, and create a great hotel booking app.

You can find a well-experienced team through social networks such as Linkedin, rating sites such as Clutch.co, or just contact us. We have a wide portfolio that we are happy to show you!

Step 5: Conduct product discovery, build product architecture, and create an MVP feature list

The next step is to conduct a product discovery. This process is necessary to clearly determine whether your product will be in demand, whether it will be used, and whether your initial idea will work.

You will also need to prepare the architecture of your future application and make a list of basic functionality. Product architecture involves the process of identifying, selecting, and interconnecting components to create a product or system. What is architecture for? Imagine that you are building a skyscraper. Can you build it without an architectural plan? Of course not. The same situation is with the application.

The information architecture of the application is responsible for the correct organization of the content and functionality of the product. We will provide you with an example of a list of MVP features a little later.

MVP (Minimum Viable Product) is a concept popularized in the software development world to refer to a basic version of an end product. Generally, an MVP is developed with the idea of quickly unveiling it to an audience for testing and feedback.

Step 6: Create UI/UX design

Then you can start creating a hotel booking application UI/UX design. UI/UX design stage consists of the following steps:

• Product definition. Crafting a killer product begins with context. To ensure success, UX designers and stakeholders must join forces to collaborate on the essential details of this concept phase – including stakeholder interviews, value proposition mapping and engaging in creative brainstorming sessions. Only then can they construct something truly remarkable!
• Product research. Comprehensive research helps shape every successful design decision and can be a cost-effective step. By investing early, organizations are able to save resources while honing their understanding of user needs through individual interviews or benchmarking against competitors.
• Analysis. The overarching objective of the analysis phase is to go beyond merely understanding what users desire; rather, unlocking key insights as to why they require it. Through constructing user personas, uncovering meaningful user stories and devising storyboards, this phase will demystify customer motivations and needs in order to derive actionable outcomes.
• Design. Product teams come together to craft the perfect end-user experience, beginning with crafting information architecture and finishing with creating an engaging UI design. This step includes sketching, preparing wireframes, creating prototypes, creating a design specification and creating design systems.
• Validation. Upon completion of the high-fidelity design stage, an essential component of product delivery is validation. During user testing sessions, stakeholders and end-users have a unique opportunity to assess performance against core project objectives while also providing valuable feedback that aligns with business expectations.

Step 7: Conduct usability testing

After the design of your application is ready, you can start testing. First, test the design within your team. Then you can start testing on real users.

At RewiSoft, for usability testing, we use our in-house UX lab. Only 1% of companies use this method. An eye tracker is a unique tool that captures the movement of a person’s gaze and helps get a record of where and for how long the user was looking. User testing with an eye-tracking tool allows us to watch the live eye-tracking stream provided during usability testing.

Step 8: Move to the app development

After the design is ready, developers should use the documentation and architecture from previous steps to write code for all the software components.

The development part is divided into 2 steps: front-end development and back-end development. At RewiSoft, we usually assign 2+ developers to run this stage. Let’s take a deeper look at the main steps of the hotel booking app development stage:

• Tech stack & documentation. The development team carefully selects the most appropriate technologies for your project. The technical documentation details each feature and functionality, as well as user roles interactions – to ensure a successful end result!
• Software architecture plan. Developers construct the foundation of a software product by carefully deciding between monolith and microservices, setting up controllers to shape performance, and designing APIs from scratch. They then move on to building an intuitive interface for users that clearly shows how all parts interact with one another.
• Sprints planning. The creation of features is key in product development – the development team ensures the highest priority and most effective sequences are established. This step lays a strong foundation for successful project completion.
• Infrastructure setup for testing + CI/CD to the test servers. By leveraging DevOps, the team builds a production-level environment on the cloud, which allows customers to test their software thoroughly. The team additionally configures the system for automated changes to appear in this same simulated setting, thereby championing efficiency and efficacy throughout development!
• Client and server development & QA. At this stage, client and server parts of the product are developed (development of UI components, API, etc.) and tested.
• Regression testing. QA tests the entire product thoroughly. The team fixed bugs that may have appeared when they were adding new features and product components.
• Production Infrastructure setup + CI/CD to the prod servers. The team develops a production-ready cloud environment that adapts to changing requirements, offering unparalleled scalability. With the advanced domain and system configurations they create, changes made to the product immediately take effect on this platform.

Step 9: Test your new app

Then it’s time for the final test. At this step, QA engineers should test all delivered code and carry out manual testing for developed components. Here are the main QA aspects to use: CI/CD, Integrational, Automation Strategy, Regression, and Resource planning.

Step 10: Maintain, launch, and support your app

The last step is to fix all the inaccuracies and bugs in the application and prepare it for release. You can launch it when you are sure that the application works smoothly without a single error. But the work on the application does not end there. How long will the product exist, so long will you need to support it.

RewiSoft Experience in Hotel Booking App Development

RewiSoft offers high-quality and affordable mobile app development services. We provide top-notch expertise and cutting-edge solutions for your business’s mobile applications. Our team is committed to ensuring the best performance in terms of design, user-friendliness, and modern technology – so you can rest assured that our products will meet all expectations!

We can provide you with the following mobile app development services:

• Android app development. Our developers are up to the challenge when it comes to creating top-tier Android apps. Whether you’re looking for a custom solution or require assistance with full-lifecycle development, our team has got you covered!
• IOS app development. With cutting-edge technologies, RewiSoft can help you deliver a solution for your iOS application project that will stand out from the competition with its creative concept. Rely on us to provide high-quality results in an efficient manner and create something truly special!
• Flutter app development. Our experts leverage the power of Flutter’s architecture to create feature-rich applications with intuitive user experiences and lightning-fast performance. We provide a full suite of services in regard to developing your idea into an app right through post-launch support.
• Hybrid app development. RewiSoft combines top talent with an impressive portfolio of experience to craft ultra-responsive and feature-packed mobile applications. Leverage our expertise to create hybrid app solutions for your business that will drive growth, engage users, and perform at the highest levels.

RewiSoft team can also provide you with outstanding hotel booking application development services. We recently completed work on the Fundok project. Fundok is a guest-facing solution that gives users incredible dynamic content about the city and things to do, digital apartment guides and a platform to order things such as in-room dining, groceries, book restaurants and fun experiences around the city.

After analyzing the idea of ​​our client and brainstorming within the team, we identified the following areas of work:

• Information architecture creation. One of our client’s requirements was to create an application in which the user can find what he needs within a few seconds. We have achieved this thanks to a well-organized information architecture. All application content was organized, and properly built functionality did not prevent the user from achieving the main goal.
• Visually appealing UI/UX design. Applications like Fundok should be bright and eye-catching. We created a design system with all the necessary elements for the application and branding elements that made Fundok stand out from the competition.
• Ensuring complete security. Since Fundok users will be sharing their personal data in the app, we needed to ensure that the app was completely secure. When creating a security system, we used all the norms and standards of the hospitality industry.

As a result, we created an all-in-one application where users can find everything they need for a great trip. After testing the application, we received excellent feedback from the first users. We now support this application and continue to receive valuable recommendations and feedback from the client and Fundok users.

What are The Main Benefits of Hotel Booking App Development

Hotel booking app development brings great benefits to both hotel owners and customers. Let’s take a closer look at them:

Benefits for hotel owners

Hotel booking apps are a valuable asset to smaller hotels, providing customers with continual accessibility throughout the year. By effortlessly computing total cost and extended amenities at guests’ fingertips, these applications ensure precision in every booking – permitting customers to evaluate their brands of choice quickly and accurately.

Hotel booking apps can help unlock exciting new growth and engagement opportunities. They offer customers a seamless experience before, during, and after their stay – from quick check-in/out procedures to positive brand recognition amongst friends. With the right app in place, your hotel’s potential is truly limitless!

Benefits for customers

The hotel booking application consolidates all hotel alternatives into a single area. They may select the best hotel based on a number of criteria, including location, price range, facilities, and check-in and check-out hours.

A hotel booking application enables the user to inspect the hotel by seeing extensive information and images of the hotel rooms. They are not required to visit each hotel and physically examine the rooms. It is possible to plan in advance.

When utilizing a hotel booking app with the necessary functionality, users have a number of payment methods, including credit cards, debit cards, app transfers, net banking, and even paying at check-in.

The Best Feature List For Hotel Booking App Development

Customers choose hotel booking applications based on various criteria. However, one of the most important criteria is the availability of functionality necessary for users. Let’s first look at the list of must-have features that you definitely need to add to your product during hotel booking app development.

MVP features for booking app development

Among the must-have features for hotel booking app development, we highlight the following:

Booking and сancellation

Customers can have peace of mind when booking their accommodations through intuitive payment options like credit/debit, PayPal, or others. Plus, taking advantage of a hotel’s easy cancellation policies on the app allows them to quickly and conveniently cancel any bookings without hassle!

View accommodation

With this feature, customers can get a real sense of their prospective accommodation before they book. From pool views and room statuses to photo galleries and maps – this feature gives users all the information that’s needed to make an informed choice.

User account

This feature allows users to manage and access their individual data easily, such as booking history, preferred language/currency settings, and a customized wish list.

Hotel account

Hotel owners can benefit from utilizing this account to access a range of features, including filling out detailed information, adding basic details about their property, listing available rooms and making use of special offers and discounts.

Notifications

Marketing teams have an exciting opportunity to promote hotel bookings with custom alerts and discounts. By leveraging the power of their app users, they can drive greater engagement and help reach potential!

Messenger

Customers and hotel owners can benefit from a more personal experience thanks to in-app messaging. With this feature, customers have access to clarity on bookings, exclusive deals, personalized tips for their stay as well as other valuable information at the touch of a button.

CRM integration

To ensure guests feel as comfortable and at home as possible, implementing CRM technology in the hotel booking app provides an enhanced customer experience – a hallmark of excellent hospitality.

Feedbacks and ratings

With the help of cutting-edge technology, customers can gain a deeper understanding of what to expect from their hotel stay. This feature includes an intuitive feedback form that allows users to make well-informed decisions based on reviews and ratings of hotels before they book!

Broader functionality for booking app development

If you want to beat the competition and take hotel booking app development to the next level, we recommend that you take a look at the list of more advanced features you can add to your application:

Recommendations

A unique “recommended for you” search engine collects all of the user’s search history and recommends hotels. This aids in tailoring customer requests and promotes in-app engagement.

Availability forecasting

This feature analyzes a large amount of data (seasonality, number of flights, number of tourists, etc.). It can predict the number of available hotel rooms for visitors in a certain period of time. This feature helps tourists plan their trips better.

Smart travel assistant

Travelers can now get around-the-clock help and support, as well as assistance navigating common issues with the introduction of virtual travel agents. Travel bots are revolutionizing by delivering a broad range of services: from hotel searches to full trip planning.

Automatic language detection

Personalizing the language in your application based on user location can drastically improve customer satisfaction and drive engagement.

Virtual reality for viewing rooms

Using this feature, users can explore hotels and rooms in unprecedented detail with 360-degree photos, immersive videos, and interactive 3D tours.

Personalized planner

This feature offers users the full journey experience – from booking accommodations to discovering hidden destinations tailored to their taste.

Third-Party Integrations to Consider During Hotel Booking App Development

In order to enhance the user experience, we advise you to consider third-party integrations during hotel booking app development.

Our team recommends using the following integrations:

Taxi

This integration will allow users to order a taxi without leaving the application. We also recommend adding the ability to rent cars for independent movement around the city to this integration.

Navigation maps

Integration with various maps will help the user to plan their journey. Since the map will be inside the application, users will not spend too much time searching for the map they need. We also recommend that you integrate a map that will show places of interest, cafes and other places for various activities.

Weather forecast

Thanks to this integration, users of your hotel booking application will always be aware of what the weather is expected on the days of their stay at your hotel. Therefore, it will be easier for travelers to plan their stay in hotels and other activities.

City guide

This integration will help travelers quickly get used to a new country and a new city. Without leaving the application, users can quickly plan their vacation, as well as find attractions and other places of interest.

Rating-review API

App owners can leverage the power of well-known hotel rating sites like Trip Advisor by integrating their API and providing users with access to reviews within their app. This enables a more informed decision-making process when selecting hotels for an upcoming trip.

Payments

For any business, ensuring a secure payment gateway is a must-have integration in their mobile app. To enhance the user experience and ensure complete convenience, integrating multiple APIs such as PayPal, debit/credit card payments, or net banking should be taken into consideration when planning your hotel booking app development. E-wallets are also increasingly gaining traction among users worldwide due to their seamless transactions.

Top 2023 Trends in Hotel Booking App Development

For you to be able to develop a truly unique and popular hotel booking application, we would like you to take a look at the list of trends in hotel booking app development that is gaining great popularity in 2023:

Virtual tours

Augmented Reality is revolutionizing the hospitality industry, allowing visitors to explore and experience hotel amenities from afar. Let your customers book with confidence by providing immersive previews of entire hotels or individual rooms. Stand out from competitors through 360-degree video tours and photos for a more comprehensive depiction that exceeds expectations!

Restaurant and table reservation

You can greatly enhance your guests’ experiences with exclusive restaurant and table reservations! Take the hassle away of having to wait in line on busy days, like weekends. Make sure they get their desired time slot instantly by offering this amenity – ensuring that they can fully enjoy their fine-dining experience at a top-notch quality hotel through you.

Chatbots and AI assistance

Enhancing guest experiences with a personalized touch, the next generation of hotel booking apps will incorporate advanced technology applications – such as AI and chatbots – to provide round-the-clock virtual assistance. From planning trips to resolving any inquiries related to sightseeing or transportation in record time, these features can ensure your guests are never left stranded, no matter their location around the globe!

Additional values

Your hotel booking app can become a super app by taking advantage of third-party integrations and strategic partnerships. By forging deals with tour operators, you can offer customers an enriched experience that includes comprehensive sightseeing solutions from within your platform – creating immense value for them in the process! Furthermore, you may integrate a few more sophisticated features to make your app a one-stop destination for visitors:

• Flight bookings
• Laundry services
• Car rentals
• Local food ordering
• Entertainment ticket booking

Top Hotel Booking App Development Tech Stacks

For a hotel booking app to truly stand out from the competition, leveraging state-of-the-art technology is key. To develop an experience that exceeds expectations, here is a list of tech stacks to incorporate into every stage of development:

IOS hotel booking app development

Here is what we recommend to use to develop hotel booking app for the IOS system:

Language: Objective-C, Swift.

Core: iOS SDK, CocoaTouch / Multimedia.

Analytics: Firebase, Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Facebook.

Data: Realm, CoreData, UserDefaults, KeyChain, CryptoSwift.

Android hotel booking app development

For the Android system, we advise your team to use the following for hotel booking app development:

Language: Java, Kotlin.

Core: Android SDK, Android Jetpack.

Analytics: Firebase, Amplitude, AppsFlyer, Facebook.

Data: Realm, SQLite, Shared Preferences, Room.

Hybrid hotel booking app development

Hybrid development is gaining a lot of popularity lately. Our team recommends that you use Flutter to create an application that will work great on various types of operating systems. Learn more about Flutter app development here.

Challenges You May Face During Hotel Booking App Development

Like any other product development process, hotel booking app development has its own specifics, and most likely, you will encounter certain difficulties during development. Let’s go over the main ones so you are better prepared:

Insufficient research

To create an effective, successful app that resonates with its target audience, it’s essential first to have a deep understanding of their needs. This means studying your customers and developing customer profiles before you jump into the design or development process.

Additionally, analyzing competitor apps – from specifications, features and marketing strategies – will provide valuable insights into what works in the marketplace and how you can make improvements for ultimate success!

Not prioritizing core features

Before launching your hotel app, ensure not to get carried away with additional features. Instead of viewing it as the prototype for a full-scale product, consider this version an opportunity to validate learning and test your concept and technology stack reliably.

Start small: ensure that all essential functionalities are included to give users what they need right off the bat – such as search engine capabilities, personal accounts management options, and payment gateway support when making bookings.

Once those primary elements have been honed through feedback loops provided by early adopters’ use cases – then other components can be added quickly afterward!

Data management issues

The digital age has created an onslaught of essential data that needs to be stored and processed effectively. Without the right architecture in place, excessive demand can create performance issues – even leading to costly downtime for businesses.

Investing in a cloud-based system can help mitigate these risks by taking on responsibility for hardware maintenance as well as integrating software modules from multiple sources like app interactions, reviews portals, social networks, etc., which often lead to duplicate entries and unstructured data buildup.

Privacy and security problems

Failing to secure data can have devastating consequences for your brand image and lead you to incur financial penalties from the government. Taking a proactive approach by adhering to local privacy laws, industry standards, as well as ISO/IEC 27001 security policies is essential in safeguarding against breaches of personal information.

To do this successfully requires measures such as multi-factor authentication, automatic logoff protocols, encryption technology and role-based access control systems to be actively implemented along with regular employee cyber safety training programs put into place.

Wrong architecture

With the right architecture, your app will run like a dream. However, if it is not carefully designed and implemented, you could end up with an unreliable system plagued by lag issues. To ensure smooth performance for users of your application, consider these types of architectures:

• Leveraging a multi-tenant SaaS architecture eliminates the need to invest heavily upfront and keeps maintenance costs low. Additionally, businesses benefit from distributed computing resources for increased performance levels.
• Unlock the potential of your system with microservices architecture; benefit from independent development, testing and updating of software components without risking disruption to other parts.
• Serverless platforms like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services (AWS) provide the perfect platform to quickly design, develop, and launch your application.

How Much Does It Cost to Build a Travel Booking App?

It is unlikely that someone will be able to tell you the exact price of hotel booking app development without studying your idea, plan, requirements, etc. Hotel booking app development cost depends on many factors, including:

• Complexity and size of the project
• Number of features
• Functional complexity
• Design complexity
• Number of integrations
• Selected tech stack
• Team experience
• Team location

At RewiSoft, we offer competitive pricing for travel booking app development:

• Mobile App Development: Starting at $30,000
• Web Platform Development: Starting at $30,000

To make it simpler for you to calculate the approximate price for hotel booking app development, we have compiled a table in which you will see the prices for individual hotel booking app development processes in different regions.

We advise you to pay attention to Eastern Europe, as this region offers not only highly qualified designers and developers but also reasonable prices.

How Long Does It Take To Build A Booking App?

The time you need for hotel booking app development depends on the same factors as the price. The most important thing here is to choose an experienced and knowledgeable development team that will be able to create an excellent product for you in a short time according to your needs, desires and requirements.

It takes about 3 months to develop an MPV and 8-9 months for a full-fledged product with a variety of functionality.

Take a look at the following table. In it, you can find information about how much time it takes for individual hotel booking app development processes for companies of different sizes.

A Few Last Words About Hotel Booking App Development

With the digital revolution in full swing, it is vital to ensure that your travel and hospitality venture capitalizes on modern technology. To be sure of success, entrusting project development to experienced professionals can make all the difference when embarking upon projects such as a hotel mobile booking app. The thoughtful selection allows for an informed decision leading to its fruition with confidence.

At RewiSoft, we offer high-quality hotel booking development services. During hotel booking app development, our team uses best design practices, advanced technologies and modern tools to create the product of your dreams. If you have an idea for your future hotel booking app and are looking for a reliable hotel booking app development company, contact us today! Our team will be happy to discuss your project and help you realize it.