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If you’re a travel agency owner that wants to bring their business to a whole new level, investing your money into building a modern, efficient and reliable travel booking website is something that you want to look into.
While a lot of people might not hop on the trend of having an online portal that allows users to do everything on their own, the statistics suggest something else.
Out of the 148 million online travel bookings that were made in 2018, around 82% of them were done without any human interaction, which means they were booked through mobile applications and websites.
Those numbers alone prove that travel bookings are being made through online portals without the help of human interaction these days, making it vital for travel booking agencies to offer their services on a wider scale through online portals.
As a Custom Travel Agency owner, you want to take full benefit of the evergrowing travel and tourism industry by investing your money into building a modern, efficient and reliable travel booking platform.
But before you start looking into getting one, you want to know the types of travel portal development, what they have for travel agencies and customers, and how much it would cost to build one.
Two Types Of Travel Portal Development
Before we talk about how much it would cost to build a travel booking website, you have to know what type of portal you want to have.
As of now, there are two types of travel portal developments; The first one is the B2B travel portal development and the other one is the B2C travel portal development.
Both of these portals are different, which means that there will be variation in the travel portal development cost.
What Is A B2B Travel Portal?
A B2B Travel Portal is an online booking engine that offers important components to travel agents while providing white-label solutions.
Here are some features that you will get with a B2B Travel Portal:
- Agent registration and login
- Set profile of agents
- Build own package
- Agent wise mark ups
- Check Booking
- Cancel Booking
- Issue Online Vouchers
- Invoice & Receipts
- Real Time Reporting
- Payment Gateway Integration
- Auto Alerts On Bookings, Tickets and Confirmations
In short, a B2B Travel portal is for travel agents that want to offer their services, products and packages to individuals that want to go on trips.
What Is A B2C Travel Portal?
B2C Travel Portal is an online travel booking portal that offers online search and book functionalities with hotel, flights, tours, transfer, activities and package modules for global B2C consumers.
Here are some features that you will get with a B2C Travel Portal:
- Booking engines for hotels, flights, holidays, activities, and transfer services
- Integrated shopping cart
- Integrated Payment Gateways
- Live Chat and Feedback options
- Integrated CRM (Customer Relationship Management)
- Registration for customers
- Membership for customers
These are just some of the many features that you can get with a B2C Travel Portal.
In short, the B2C Travel Portal is the one that individuals use to book flights, holidays, activities and transfer services.
How Much Does B2B Travel Portal Development Cost?
A B2B travel portal development could cost you anywhere from around $1500 to $5000 USD.
The total amount could exceed the $5000 USD mark depending on the solutions, functionalities and design of the platform itself. There are B2B Travel Portals out there that cost more than $20,000.
How Much Does B2C Travel Portal Development Cost?
A B2C travel portal development can cost you anywhere from around $1000 to $4000 USD.
Just like the B2B Travel Portal, the B2C Travel Portal could easily exceed the $4000 USD development cost mark depending on the design, functionalities, and solutions that one would like to have on it.
What Makes Travel Booking Websites Expensive?
A travel booking website is not like an average business website that offers services. With this type of website, you need to have multiple software, APIs, programs, modules, and systems to run simultaneously. Not only that, but the security features of such websites are required to be top-notch as there are Payment Gateways and User Data to be stored, hence the massive price tag.
How Long Does It Take To Build A Travel Booking Website?
It all depends on the features, systems, integrations and the design of the travel booking website. But on an average, developing a travel booking website would only take around 6 to 12 weeks.
The time frame that we mentioned above includes designing, developing, testing, and deploying the entire website. Once it goes live, the developers would make sure that the website is stable and is capable of handling a huge amount of traffic.
Dos And Don’ts For Building A Successful Travel Website
If you are planning to build a travel booking website, there are some things that you need to do and avoid, which includes the following:
Don’t Try To Save Money By Buying Bad Booking Systems
There are tons of plugins, APIs and other booking systems that you need to add in your travel booking website so users can safely book trips, flights, hotels and other things at one go, which is why you should never try to buy bad booking systems just to save some money.
While you may save some money by buying bad booking systems, the damage could be seen when you start losing users and notice a big bounce rate. Not only that but with bad booking systems, the reliability level of the platform that you are building right now could be affected in a huge way.
Don’t Overuse Plugins
A lot of websites, applications and portals use plugins to run a booking website with the goal of having more features. While this might be a good thing to hear, but in reality the more plugins you would have, the heavier your website becomes, which means increased loading times, and that’s not a good thing.
Instead, just have efficient and light plugins on your website. By doing this you can have better functionality and won’t be required to worry about loading speeds for landing pages.
Prioritize Security
Security should be a major priority if you are planning to develop a travel booking website considering that you would be handling payments, user data, and other information while running the website.
Try to make sure that you are setting up safe Payment Gateways along with adding codes and security features that would keep personal information, user data and other things secure while you’re offering services and tour packages.
Remember, data breach is no joke, and believe us, getting involved in one could ruin your reputation in a huge way.
Optimize Images And Videos
Have you ever wondered why some images and videos on websites load slowly compared to the page itself? Well, that’s because the images and videos are not properly optimized. This is why you have to make sure that all the images and videos that you want to use on your website are properly optimized once they are uploaded so they can load in sequence with the page itself.
Optimized images and videos are more likely to load, play and appear on all devices when compared to videos and images that are not optimized. Not only that, but if you are uploading heavy content on your website, it could affect the overall stability of the pages that they are uploaded on.
Focus On Your Niche
Your travel booking website needs to have a strongpoint, which is why during the developmental stages of the website, you need to focus on one thing.
It could either be a country, region, a type of traveler, and even a type of trip. Just make sure that you are capable of providing valuable content that would appeal to your target audience.
With a strong targeted niche, you can improve your user-to-customer conversion rate in a huge way.
Do Not Ignore SEO
A lot of people think that having a website is enough, but in reality it is different and it takes more than that to attract users, potential customers and collaborators.
You need to make sure that your website is actually capable of ranking on certain Search Engine Results Pages, can work on all devices, and is properly optimized.
Once you have a website that’s SEO Optimized, your marketing campaigns could see better results, and you can get your website ranked on certain keywords that could help you get a massive amount of organic traffic.
5 Things To Prioritize When Developing A Travel Booking Website, Application Or Platform
If you are planning to build a travel booking website, application or platform, you want to prioritize the following things:
- Have a dedicated team that constantly works on the project
- Should be capable of offering 24/7 service
- Analyze your local, national and global competitors
- Have a geographical location for your operations
- Set up a marketing campaign with maximum ROI
What Determines The Cost To Build A Travel Booking Website?
The most influential factors that determine the cost of building a travel booking website include:
- Vendor type
- Vendor location
- Complexity of the travel booking website
- The amount of features that you want to have on the travel booking website
- Back-end infrastructure f the travel booking website
- APIs
- Complexity of UX and UI design
- Inclusion of additional branding visuals
- Development approach for the travel booking website (examples include: native, mobile web, hybrid, and many more)
Please do note that these are just some of the many factors that determine the cost of building a travel booking website.
The total amount of money that you would have to pay depends on who you are hiring, where you are from and what type of portal you are trying to build.
Which Solutions, Integrations, Systems, Programs And Features Are Included In A Travel Booking Website?
During the development of a travel booking website, the developers integrate a number of features and APIs to make sure that every user that visits the platform gets an all-in-one solution. Most of the travel booking websites have the following features:
- B2B Solution
- B2C Solution
- Tour Operator Software
- Travel CRM
- Restaurant Software
- Hotel Contracting
- White Label
- XML Integrations
- Mobile Apps
- Accounting Systems
- Shopping Cart Application
- Travel Management System
- Tour Guide-with Royalty Program
- Ticketing Barcode Scanners
- Flight Modules
- Meal/Restaurant Management
- City Pass
- Visa Modules
How Are Travel Booking Websites Beneficial?
Online Travel Booking websites are basically a one-stop online shop that allows tour operators and travel agencies to offer deals related to hotels, flights, transfers, activities, packages and many more at one place. There’s a different portal for tour operators and travel agencies, and another one for customers, where they can search and book hotels, flights, transfers, packages, activities and many more.
With everything in one place, everyone can offer their packages and services to a huge audience. This makes the entire process of traveling easier and more compact as there’s a complete online solution.
Conclusion
If you are planning to build a travel booking website, there is not a big difference between the two solutions that you would be choosing from, which are B2B Travel Portal and B2C Travel Portal. The B2B Travel Portal would cost you anywhere around $1000 to $5000 USD and the B2C Travel Portal would cost you around $1500 to $4000 USD. However, the total price for the development of such portals depends on the APIs, features, programs, systems and modules that you want to add on the platform.
