Technology is changing almost every aspect of our lives at a terrific pace. Studies show that half of the travelers spend around one week researching their holiday, while the other half already book their hotels and flights three months before their travel date. Not just this, it was also found that 23% of the leisure travelers were glad to find relevant hotel and flights options on their smartphones.
No wonder airlines digital transformation is at its peak. The potential to transform operations at airlines and airports enables seamless collaboration concepts like Airport-Collaborative Decision Making (A-CDM) and Total Airport Management (TAM). Enabling seamless flight booking via flight booking engines for customers is an excellent example of this.
What is Flight Booking App?
Flight booking applications automate the booking process for the airline industry. With the easy-to-use applications, users worldwide can book their flights on-the-go, and make the best use of functionalities like quick flight search, download tickets, check and modify booking details, one-tap check-in, besides many more. In the aggregator flight booking solutions, users can even compare the prices of various airline services and make an informed decision.
What are the Benefits of Investing in Flight Booking App Development?
- Automates the flight booking process to make it easier for the staff to offer better customer service
- Improves customer experience by bringing everything under the fingertips of the customer
- Allows quick check-ins, thereby saving valuable resources and time
- With integrated CRM and marketing solutions, businesses can attract more customers with lucrative discounts based on their preferences
- Leverage AI tools to identify buying trends and offer custom marketing messages to the target audience
- Bring better engagement for the business
Which are the Popular Flight Booking Apps in the Market?
1. Skyscanner
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Skyscanner is a travel search engine that compares flight prices from across the internet and helps you make an informed choice. The app puts down detailed comparisons for travel options based on the price and length of the journey. Once the user has chosen the ‘Select’ button, they are navigated to the airline’s or travel agent’s website, where you can securely pay. Top features of Skyscanner include:
- Deals on flights, hotels, hostels, apartments, resorts, and rentals
- All trip bookings in a single platform
- Activity suggestion based on destination
- Travel inspiration using the “explore” button
- Price comparison
- Custom search
- Loyalty options
Also Read: How to build a Website like SkyScanner?
2. Kiwi
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Kiwi allows you to discover the best prices on hotels, rental cars, taxis, airport parking, transfers, and VIP lounges. It boasts of connecting across 1000s of airlines, trains, and bus carriers worldwide with the cheapest tickets to anywhere. Kiwi offers seamless customer assistance in over 12+ languages. Kiwi also makes it easier to access boarding passes (even offline), important notifications, and price alerts, and a lot more. Popular features of the app include:
- Airport lounge access
- Airport & aircraft maps
- Destination guides
- Mobile boarding passes
3. Momondo
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Momondo makes flights price comparison easier by bringing all the information in a unique graph showing price variation within a specific period. The app also brings to you interactive maps wherein users can draw a ring around a specific area and discover the list of hotels and prices around it. Top features of Momondo include:
- Search, compare, and find flight tickets
- Get exclusive access to accommodation options
- Sorting based on price, airport, route, airline, departure and arrival hours, reviews, property types, facilities, and themes
How to Develop a Flight Booking App?
Agile Process of Building Flight Booking App
Step 1: Discovery
Understanding User’s Expectations
Understanding what users expect is crucial to delivering the right mobile app. Generally, travelers would love a flight booking application that offers the following features:
- Seamless UI/ UX
- Allows users to plan and arrange activities by providing relevant information under one screen
- Enables users to access local information and book exclusive flights
- Provides access to local cuisine and the ability to book exclusive dining opportunities in advance
Finalize the Availability, Features, and Team Structure
After having a clear understanding of the user’s expectations, it’s time to design the solution based on the same. The first step to the same is determining the platform for which you would launch your app. You can choose from Native app development that caters to your audience on one platform or cross-platform app development to help you target audience across multiple devices with a shared codebase.
The next step after this to finalize the features that would help you bring the results. We have discussed some of the MVP features as well as advanced features to consider in upcoming sections.
Based on the results of the above brainstorming, you can choose your app development team, which must have the following resources:
- Project Manager
- Native/ Cross-platform app development
- UI/ UX engineer
- QA Analyst
Time and Cost Estimation
The last step and one of the most crucial steps is cost estimation. It depends on multiple factors, including:
- Application design: UI/ UX, graphics, and visual components are included under this. To deliver the application that consumers love, you need to ensure best-in-class design elements.
- Functionality and Complexity: While developing MVP can be a favorable choice for low-budget plans, having advanced features can increase the cost of your flight booking app.
- Resources and their Experience: Having several experienced developers can increase the cost of development.
- User-Platform: Choosing native app development for each platform can be costly, while having a cross-platform app developed can help you reach a wider audience with less cost.
- Development time: The time to develop the flight booking app naturally impacts the cost of development.
Step 2: Design and Architecture
The architecture of the flight booking applications guides product development. The following figure illustrates the flight booking app model, right from user searches for the flight to final payments and request transfer.
Step 3: Development
A flight booking solution is developed in multiple stages, including development for consumer applications and admin panels. Let’s discuss these here.
Customer App Development:
A customer app with UI/ UX that pleases users generally includes the development of the following features:
| Feature | Description |
| Quick Sign Up and Login | A seamless login experience is a must for easier access to services for the customer. You can either have standard login and sign-up process or make it more seamless with the social media login process. |
| Flight schedules | Make it easier for the users to access flight schedules according to source and destination on a specific day and time. |
| Flight booking | Easy flight booking within a few taps will help you gain popularity. Ensure you implement the same and give users a reason to return to you every time they need. |
| Booking status | Here users will gain quick access to the booking status, including details such as confirmation, cancellations, etc. |
| Flight status | This section will display the status of flights, such as delays, cancellations, and arrival or departure. |
| Check-in | Airport check-ins will be available here. |
| Ratings and reviews | Users can share their feedback on this section and rathe their experience. |
| Make payments | Customers can make payments for the flight bookings made. |
Admin Panel Development:
This will be the section from where admins will manage the application’s back-end and get a view of the entire system.
| Feature | Description |
| Manage to book | Service providers can manage various bookings coming via the portal and take action if required. |
| Manage offers | Travel agents or businesses can manage offers they provide their customers with or offer custom discounts based on customers’ preferences. |
| Customer Support | This will help admins connect with customers in a few clicks and help them with required answers as and when needed. |
| Information management | Manage all the information about flights and business you display on the app from here. |
| View searches | Check for the searches that users are carrying out to deliver them the right services. |
| Manage ticket booking | Check and manage the ticket bookings made via the app to take action if required. |
| Manage flights | Publish and manage flights on the system and share details about them. |
| Check reviews | Admins can check for the feedback shared by the customer to take relevant actions. |
| Share offers | Admins can share discounts and offers with the users in a few clicks and publish them. |
| Receive payments | Admins can check for the payments made by the users or access information about the same. |
Advanced Features:
Apart from MVP features, here are some advanced functionalities you can consider.
| Feature | Description |
| Cabin maps | Cabin maps allow for real-time visualization of the cabin so that users can choose the seating arrangement they want. |
| Multi-day search | This allows users to compare prices on various days and times to check for the ticket prices and plans. |
| Mass booking discount | You can build customer loyalty by letting them avail themselves of lucrative discounts when they book multiple tickets. |
| Price drop alert | Push notifications to notify users about price drops. |
| API integration | Integrating cutting-edge API will help you ensure the best performance and app interaction. |
| Next-gen technology implementation | Integrating cutting-edge technologies will help you boost the features of your application. At Matellio, we offer services such as:
· AI/ML development · Blockchain engineering services · IoT development · GIS integration And many more. You name it; we have it. |
Step 4: Quality Assurance and Deployment
After the app development, the next step is QA and testing, where our QA engineers will test the application to overcome the glitches that may arise during development. They create test cases and conduct thorough testing. The results of the same determine if there are specific areas that need improvement. The development team works on the glitches to deliver a quality product for our customers.
Once both the teams give it a go, the solution is deployed for the users.
Get Started with Flight Booking App Development in a Few Steps with Matellio
While we have discussed the process we follow at Matellio to deliver the right application to you; our value addition does not just end here. Not only do we offer quality and time efficiency, but we also provide our customers with round-the-clock support after deployment along with digital marketing services at cost-effective prices. Our business analysts help you bring out the best in your ideas and build a product that helps you thrive. To know more, book a free consultation with our experts.
