How to Build a Travel Agency Software for Booking and Accounting?

Do not waste time. You can start with the first steps to build the appropriate platform to participate in this profitable and exciting business.

Top 3 travel agent software advantages

Online travel agents let their customers plan their vacations without a hassle. Experienced travelers will evaluate the difference between travel agent software features and standard offline offices:

Maximum comfort

Every visitor will assess the clear advantages of travel agency software solutions. It is hard to find disadvantages here. By using this application, a person has no need to leave his home when he decides to book travel. The online travel agency is accessible to customers 24 hours per day, and it works seven days per week, unlike standard travel operators’ offices. Customers can book their tours anywhere and anytime if they choose online travel websites. As a rule, such virtual companies provide high-level customer service, and clients can see and verify the offered tour packages from these online operators at any moment. Such types of virtual booking webpages are very convenient for hard-working persons.

Maximum alternatives

When customers use an online travel agency, they get all the possible options to see and select the best-priced offers because there are no limits for the best travel agency booking engine. In choosing a standard travel company, the clients can see offers from agency partners only. Virtual travel agents are not limited in their actions, so customers can get a wide range of variants, and it is possible to make a lot of great bookings. The more variants a customer gets to consider, the better his chances of saving on costs.

Maximum freedom of choice

Online travel agencies allow customers to make their own choices. There is no pressure on the customer to make a decision. In contrast to standard offline services, online travel agencies use the hands-off approach. Clients’ service support is there to assist with different questions, but they will not put pressure on the customer while deciding what travel package to choose.

How to Start Travel Agent Software Development

If you have decided to work in the travel field and your wish is to make custom travel booking software, you are in the right place. Before diving into web development, let’s look through the main steps of the process. Make sure to take care of such webpage features:

User accounts

Try to make registration smooth and fast – users don’t like waiting. The very first step customers take after installing the app is creating a profile. Usually, you have two options – a quick login using your email or social media account, or manual registration. It is better to give customers the opportunity to choose from these. Try to create a profile, which can be fully personalized. Let your users add more information about themselves and choose their native language.

Notifications

This is vital, especially for mobile applications. As a way to help with certain travel issues, your app must have a way to remind the user about certain events, such as their flights or excursions.

Schedule

The more personalized this app will be, the better. For travel applications, there is a perfect function – schedule. Let your customers create their own plan for the trip with necessary reminders and thoroughly planned events.

Search

The navigation via an app is very important for better UX (User Experience). It is the best way to attract more users and make them loyal. Professionals know how important it is to make a useful search bar. Add more filters to shorten the list of results. The faster your user gets his request, the better.

Add useful information

You can create a blog, where your customers can read about interesting events in the country they are taking their vacations. Write about unique celebrations, museums, pretty landscapes, and other sights.

Work with other companies

Show your authority in the traveling business. Add flight booking via your app. Offer discounts and giveaways together with different organizations. Make sure to attract your users’ interests.

Navigation

It is easy to get lost in an unknown place. Make sure to add geolocation and convenient maps. Point out remarkable buildings or places, and give the fastest ways to get there. Add bus stops and shops.

Booking

Add booking tools. The more things a customer can organize in your app, the more satisfied he will be. Your website or app will quickly gain a positive reputation as convenient and professional.

How much does it cost to develop effective travel agent software?

You can’t name a certain price for the project until you have finished it completely. However, we can give an approximate investment you will make and the project complexity for that price.

The key aspects that have an impact on the price are:

• The type of travel app and its complexity
• The platform it is made for
• The design of the User Interface
• The complexity and convenience of the User Experience
• Features

So, if you need to value the cost of a travel agent booking system, take into account all the factors.

• Analyze. Your application has to solve a certain problem. Make sure people can benefit somehow by using your startup. You need to state the purpose of your app and keep it until the end.
• Target Audience. How can you describe your potential customers? How old are they? What is their nationality? Try to find specific criteria and make certain features that may attract these persons.
• Prototype. Before making a final app, create a simple one and test it. It may help you with adding more useful features and concentrating on your weaknesses and ways to solve them.
• Feel the market. You are going to enter a competitive atmosphere, so be prepared. You have to rationally analyze your perspectives and try to spice up your app by adding something unique that your competitors don’t have.

As you can see, the process of development has to start from the brainstorm. After analyzing the market and the target audience, you can start working on the project.

Depending on your goals, the expenses are widely ranged for each unique project. On the stage of pre-development, you should determine the planning and site structure, and clarify all the requirements. Then it is necessary to create profile registration and property catalogs, and care about their details. On the next stage, you should edit site features: work with property details, dates, and prices. Then you have to care about renting features and payments. Also, you need to think about the administrator interface, online customer support, push notifications, etc. Find out actual prices on these services.

The price highly depends on the functions. Here you can see the costs of almost every step of the process of app or web building:

• Planning. Usually, pre-development takes about 100 hours. An experienced team of programmers will charge you approximately $5,000.
• Adding general features. Apps or websites need these features – registration, catalog, and design details. It takes approximately 300 hours and may cost $15,000 to $17,000.
• Editing. Updating dates and prices or other details takes more than 200 hours and costs around $11,000.
• Renting features. Tools such as payments and rent approval or cancellation are made within 250 hours and cost around $12,500.
• Developers’ tools. The administration interface for monitoring and editing requires development too. It may cost $12,500 for 250 hours of work on it.
• Additional features. Instruments such as chat or a review system require more work. The development of a proper notification system and other features usually takes more than 200 hours and requires $12,000.

The design is another part of development, which needs other specialists. It is a whole other sphere of web building with its own pricing.

Top 5 Best Travel Agency Booking Engine Features

Having a booking engine in your app or on a website will make you look more professional and convenient. This nice tool will make UX better and attract more customers. You will make it easy to book a hotel room or a flight. There are many engine features, but we want to talk about the best ones:

Additional Filters for Opinionated Customers

Booking a hotel is not that easy, especially if you have particular needs and standards. However, this tool has perfect extensive filters that may help a client choose the best option. Some requests are vital; that is why there are over 20 filters to use. The search can be narrowed to a particular location, price, category, customers’ rates, etc. You can find pet-friendly facilities or luxurious cottages where the perfect vacation can be spent. The perfect online travel booking agent sees everyone as people with different goals. Your clients can book a room for a family or a couple on their honeymoon, and maybe places with certain features such as spas or restaurants.

Convenient Map Tool That Works Perfectly

Many developers don’t pay enough attention to maps. They use it once or twice, and then move on to something else. Most of the time, maps are not user-friendly – they don’t have necessary features, which is bad. However, when a travel agent website is professionally developed, it is completely opposite. The integration of Google Maps shows all the hotel results on the convenient map. There are many extensive filters that show the results quickly. The overall navigation between map and search results is fast and seamless. Just one click and you will get it. The extensive filters are not separated from the list. The hotel booking can be done straight from the map. Think about it, and create one of the best platforms, where you can use an accurate and functional map.

Rating tool

Sometimes it is hard to choose between several options. A comparison can solve this problem. The variety of customers’ requests is astonishing; that is why it is so important to satisfy their needs. You can provide them with many options, but they want the best one. Many booking agents ignore this, but professional travel websites provide their customers with a perfect feature of comparison. It makes everything less complicated for both clients and app developers. The easy and efficient design creates an appealing scheme with a detailed comparison of options. The customer will see it and decide which one is the best.

Cross-selling

More products mean more profit. This is great for both project developers and customers. With a serious platform, you can inform your clients about everything – the best airlines, local celebrations, perfect hotels, chic restaurants, car rentals, etc. While your customer has a great experience, you raise your potential for more upcoming successful deals. It definitely will help you get more profit.

Booking Manager

It is hard to keep everything right and under control. Problems happen from time to time, and you have to solve them as fast as possible. If someone has a complaint, it is always better to have the necessary tools nearby. After installing your app, a customer should forget about tons of phone calls or emails. If someone wants to ask a question or cancel the booking, he or she will be able to do it in a few clicks.

There are many useful features, but we named the most interesting of them. Those tools are made to make feedback smooth and ease the responsibility of administrators and moderators. Now they will have a powerful instrument that will help them do their jobs faster and better. Your application or website will quickly gain positive reviews and a solid reputation.

Read Also: How To Create Accounting Software?

Our Team’s Experience

The travel industry is very competitive. It can be complicated to create a successful and profitable project at first, especially if you don’t know anything about web development. However, if you hire a team of specialists, they will help you a lot.

To succeed in this task, you have to start by picking a perfect hosting platform and hiring programmers to do the development. Your website or app has to perform without flaws. That is why it needs supervision and thorough development. The next step will be connected with design. Here you can hire any team of designers that will make the final product look appealing. You can add as many features as you can, but User Experience depends a lot on the visuals.

Our company has great experience in different software development. Our specialists will provide a high level of quality and create your website as quickly as possible.

Of course, it is not easy to run a project, but we are sure that as long as professionals work on it, your app or website will be functional and competitive.