Travel Portal Development

All About Travel Portal Development Cost, Features, Types, Technology, Design, Agreement, Scope.

On a travel portal, people come and interact for a piece of information, book services, or share their experiences. Travel portal development is building the travel portal software to achieve these aims. It is the process of designing, developing, integrating, testing, and displaying the services in the users’ preferred way. The service can be flight, hotel, bus, car, cruise, visa, or excursion. The users can be a supplier, direct customer, travel agent, corporate, or portal admin.

Types of Travel Portal Development

White Label Travel Portal

White label is a great aid for small business houses and entrepreneurs. It makes them establish their business on a global platform and that too with a little investment. Without any doubt, it can be said that travel portal development really provides great assistance for the new business ventures.

Let’s surprise you by telling myths about Travel API and Its integration

Extranet

With the help of extranet, travel agents will be able to add their own contracted inventory be it of flight, be it of hotel, be it cab, be it bus or any other travel service. Travel agencies can monitor how many channels are available. This technology helps the travel agents deal with each of the available suppliers separately.

Meta Search Engine

When a user searches on the metasearch engine, it sends the request to various associated OTAs search engines and gets a response for the requested search. It presents all the options available from all associated OTAs in front of the user.

Tour Cms

It is a very beneficial tool for tour operators and DMCs. Using a Content Management System or CMS to empower your site could be one of the best investments you make in your digital presence to expand your business roots.

Custom Development

In short, A custom travel portal development is any combination of the listed product or implementation of a new idea.

Travel Portal Development Agreement

An agreement is an essential part of travel portal development if you are considering a travel portal development company. No matter how long time relation you are having with a travel portal development company. It’s a good idea to get things in writing for the benefit of both parties.

Importance Of Travel Portal Development Agreement

• Proof of Details
  It acts as an evidence of what is to be delivered, how to be delivered, what if not delivered, and other important elements. Agreements provide the terms on which both the parties have agreed and cannot deny the facts in near future to avoid any dispute.

• Prevents Misunderstanding
  It acts as a reference point at the time of communication gap. Agreement makes dispute easier to navigate and reach a deduction.
  
  It states all the duties of parties and defines the timelines of all the duties. It defines the scope of development so that clients don’t force extra customisation as well the developer don’t denies for agreed development. And if anyone does, then the party may take legal actions.

Why travel portal development, why not travel website development?

The website is a collection of web pages, which gives information about the organization, products, services, or etc. But a portal is user-centric, it requires a lot of other specifications to facilitate the user experience and demands. A portal requires a back and forth communication from one or multiple servers.

Importance of travel portal development

• Integrated Result
  It integrates several results at a place so that the traveller may find what he is looking for in one place only. A travel agent with API integration is supposed to get great business as compared to the one who does not have it. The world of travel is very big. There are many aviation companies, hotels, tour operators, and other service providers. It is a travel portal development that brings everything to a place.

• Complete Internationally
  Business is not that easy that we consider it to be, by just hearing the word. One needs to imply all the possible techniques in order to get the best profit of the venture. When discussing the travel industry, then establishment in this domain is really very tough and it is because the competition is not only in-house but one needs to fight with the global competitors as well.
  
  This can be understood with the help of an example, if there is an Indian travel agent offering tours and travel packages in any part of the country, then he gets competition both from the Indian competitors whereas also from the ones who have their business set-up in the foreign countries. In such a case, there should be symmetry in between the services that both of them provide. Because a traveler will not know whether he is searching for the services of an in-house company or some outsider. Travel portal development provides a platform to compete with domestic rivals, in fact, allows it to compete with all other global competitors.

• Anytime, From Anywhere
  The best advantage of having a website is that it works round the clock and can be viewed anytime from anywhere. The viewer can gather the required information instantly at any time according to their convenience. Gone are the days when travellers used to collect travel details over phone and book their itinerary in that way. This is the time when they have much more options in their smartphones and laptops. Sitting on the couch of their home they can book their travel itinerary. No matter whether they are sitting in Delhi or Denmark, this is not at all an issue for the travellers to collect the relevant data for their itinerary and this is all made possible with the travel portal development.

• Brand Building
  To be a brand is most important for any business. Travel agencies can increase their visibility in the market and improve their revenue rate with a reliable brand. It can help them to be more perceptible to the users so that the travel agents can draw the attention of the potential customers. With the help of the Internet, the travel agents can target millions of customers at a very affordable price.

• Agility
  With the travel API integration, one could customise the website completely. As it has the ability to work on the different platforms, hence it can be customised according to the same. For the travel agents, this type of software solution helps to set up the features of their desire in the website. For instance, the portal can change the payment gateway or can customise it according to the same.

• Reduce Operational Cost
  The human effort is being reduced by a proper web-based channel. As a result, It distributes travel services smoothly and instantly. Thus, it’ll earn you profit from both the customer’s end and the travel product suppliers. Modern travel portals improve business productivity by providing easy, user-friendly, and reliable customer support. Online travel portals proffer excellent customer service that can include automatic confirmation, email, and SMS notification, real-time booking and cancellation, direct payment, etc. Likewise, the travel agents can establish their accuracy and can save time and money by avoiding tedious processes on manual booking. 

Approach to travel portal Development

• Requirement Analysis
  It is the process of defining user expectations for a new software being built or modified. An Expectation arises either to solve the previous problem or to achieve an objective. All the objectives are documented, that is also known as SRS (Software Requirement Specifications). Crystal clear documentation is developed by validating a set of requirements, this helps in building the roadmap for the team from where we are to where we want to reach.

• Design
  Now, from this phase the work of the development team’s starts. Software design is a mechanism to transform user requirements into some suitable form, which helps the programmer in software coding and implementation. It consists of two parts Internal design and external design.

• External Design
  This part majorly focuses on the wireframe of the website. It is a demonstration of the original mobile or web application. It defines the elements, position, size and other specifications. Wireframe also defines the protocol for the web designers. The step helps in minimizing the error and time at the time actual web designing.

• Internal Design
  It is generally performed after the completion of external design. Database Design consists of developing a tabular representation of data, it encompasses multiple tables and defines the relationships among the tables. A properly designed database is easy to maintain, improves data consistency, and is cost-effective in terms of disk storage space. The database designer decides how the data elements correlate and what data to be stored and where. The main objectives of database designing is to provide logical understanding of data flow and further development.

Development

All the elements defined are coded in requisite programming language. A well structured source code must be error free and standardised. It lets easy debugging. Time and cost involved to maintain and enhance depends on the quality of source code. Integration of all the travel API or development of structure happens in this stage.

• Testing
  This process makes sure that there is no gap between user expectation and development. After the development phase the system is analysed and evaluated to make it error free. Multi level testing is performed with the help test cases.

• Deployment
  After the application gets certified from multi level testing. The live environment of the application is deployed on the required server. The application is set to be in ready to use condition.

• Training
  Having the right tool but not knowing how to use it is equivalent to no tool. Certainly, training all the members of the front end team, backend team and mid-office team is also the responsibility of software developers. Sessions can happen in person, on remote desks, or systems can be understood through recorded videos.

• Operation & Maintenance
  As the original traffic lands on the website, the real feedback is received. This process includes debugging the existing system errors, maintaining and enhancing the system. It is necessary to improve the performance of the application.

Cost of travel portal development

Now, this is also the much-awaited section of the article. You obviously want to know, whether it is going to break the bank? To know about the cost of travel portal development, firstly you must check factors responsible for it. Whether you are going to hire a freelancer, in house team, or a travel portal development company, more or less all the factors are the same. Please read the following factors to get a clear idea about it.

Factors Affecting the cost of travel portal development

Technical Specification

Specification of server, frontend, and backend programming language also affects the cost heavily. The scarcity of programmers of a language and resource cost of the language may increase the cost.

Platforms

Web application and mobile application are platforms where customers can access your services, the further mobile application is bifurcated in two platforms android and iOS. Between Android and iOS applications, the latter one is expensive as resources of iOS are comparatively expensive than android’s. Developing the application for all the platforms is evidently expensive.

Design, Development, Testing, And Security Complexity

The completion of the design takes a lot of time and sincerity. The time and cost to develop a design depends on the nature and complexity of the website. Development parts depend on a wide array of factors such as application architecture intricacy, no. of travel APIs involved, use of AI, and features of the application may define the time and cost required. A travel portal has a lot of transaction details and customer data therefore, overlooking the testing and security is not a good idea. Testing the application holistically and removing all the vulnerabilities to the application takes an ample amount of time which costs high.

No. of Professionals Involved And Their Experince

The application is as good as the team working behind it. So to build a travel portal software good, there is a necessity of a team of designers, developers, tester, and travel industry professionals. Now the experience of an individual depends on the nature and complexity of the application. The development of a travel portal generally requires a combination of junior, senior, and mid-level professionals.

Source Of Development

Three sources of the application developed, first, through freelancers, second, a software development company experienced in the travel niche, third, hiring the in-house team.

The cheapest option is to Hire a Freelancer, but a freelancer is better for only simple projects. Considering a software development company is a safe option among all, as you get professional services at reasonable rates.

Developing an in house team may occupy a lot of time and money. Though there are some circumstances where companies cannot avoid an in-house team. Every source has its pros and cons which the travel management company should consider while selecting the source of development.

Location Of Development

The cost of resources varies from region to region. You might get the same resource cheap in one place and expensive at another place. A freelancer in a remote area might be cheaper from metro city’s, development companies in tier 2 or tier 3 cities might be cheaper than tier 1 city’s.

Cost Of Saas Model Travel Portal

In layman language, it can be referred to as a ready-made portal. Now the cost of the Saas model totally depends on the strategy of the company whether they want to charge a fixed fee monthly, charges per booking, charges per search, or some free searches per month and charging after reaching the limit. To charge the subscription fees one can use any of the above methods.

Cost Of a Custom Travel Portal

The minimum cost to create a simple custom travel portal starts from USD 1500. Of course, customization of the portal is limitless and the cost to develop it too inestimable. As you increase the API, functions, features, services or any other factor affecting the cost may raise the charges for custom development.

Protect all parties

It acts as a reference point at the time of communication gap. Agreement makes dispute easier to navigate and reach a deduction.

It states all the duties of parties and defines the timelines of all the duties. It defines the scope of development so that clients don’t force extra customisation as well the developer don’t denies for agreed development. And if anyone does, then the party may take legal actions.

Components Of Travel Portal development Agreement

Importance Of Travel Portal Development Agreement

It provides a bird’s eye view of project goals and objectives. It explains about the module development under the yardsticks. Division of various micro modules from the whole module. The scope of work gives a clear idea to the client and developer about the boundaries of work.

Timeline Definition

After defining the micro modules of the work, this part of the agreement defines the chronology of the micromodule development. Basically, it provides the total time required for the development. Additionally, defines the milestones of the whole development process with the time required of each micromodule completion.

Application Technology

This section provides information about the technical environment of the application. Some components of this section are database environment, front end language, and backend language.

Technical Prerequisites

This section clarifies the elements to be provided by the clients, not by the development company. Some elements are travel API, payment gateway integration kit, and premium images. The client must be prepared with listed elements and the point of contact details of these elements. Indeed, the point of contact details will help in getting better support for the elements.

Application Features

This section is the most important section of the agreement. It contains a detailed listing of frontend and backend features. A detailed listed features act as a guide for both the developer and the client. It also defines options and controls available for frontend and backend users.

Development Fees

Stating the fee charged by the developer and the tax rate applicable to the fee. Also defining the payment milestone on the basis of phase or time period. Besides that, the declaration of fixed Annual maintenance charges (AMC) of the percentage of the whole project is necessary. Additional to this fee, No hidden charges should be applied.

Agreement & Terms

The agreement also contains components such as disclaimer, confidentiality, due dates, fees, project term and terminations, liability, and rights.

How To Choose A Travel Portal Development Company?

Across the world, travel companies are gearing up for advanced and cost-effective solutions to keep up with the rapid progression of science and technology. Travel portal development has become an effective weapon of the travel industry without which no travel agency can survive in this digital era.  Few companies are taking initiative in making travel portals by their own internal resources while most of the businesses are hiring professional companies having expertise in travel portal development. If you are in the same line with this second group of companies, continue to read to seek development from the best travel website developers.

• Clients must be having a clear idea of requirements. Building an accurate wireframe after the requirement specification.
• Always ask to showcase the demo of previously built sites to check the credibility of the development company.
• Documentation of all the mutually agreed terms and conditions is evidently necessary. It avoids future disputes.
• All the inputs such as API, banners, website content, the video should be ready with the client.
• Keep away from cheap solution providers.
• Ask for the development experience from the previous client served by the development company.
• Evidently, the developer team must have the travel industry knowledge and development skills for travel portal development. Thus, check both of them.
• Also, ask about the Annual Maintenance Cost and support system after development.
• Never filter companies on the basis of cost.
• Importantly, check the scalability of the project. Ask for the scope of customization of modules in the future.
• To get a deep understanding about this please check key points to consider while selecting a travel portal development company.

Travel Portal

It is the development of an online gateway for travel service seekers. The medium that offers travel services to the travel world is nothing but the travel portal.

Types Of Travel Portal User Module

• B2C Travel Portal
  Business to customer. An end customer transacting with a travel agent for travel services.

• B2B Travel Portal
  Business to business. A travel agent transacting with another travel agent to provide travel service to the end customer.

• B2G Travel Portal
  Business to government. A corporate transaction with a travel agent for travel services required for government personnel.

• B2E Travel Portal
  Business to the enterprise. A corporate transacting with a travel agent for travel services required for its employee.

Characteristics Of a Good Travel Portal

• User Friendly
  As the travel industry targets all age groups, creating a portal that is easily navigable from a kid to a senior citizen is imperative. Goal should be to provide an assistive approach to what the user wants with the minimum amount of clicks possible. Font size & family of website must be easy to read and colour family of website must be selected to soothe the eyes of the user. Moreover, Developers and clients both should try to make it functionally and aesthetically appealing.

• Rich Information
  The only connection between you and your faraway sitting potential customer is your website, which is a representation of whole company.  Put a lot of relevant and interactive content on the website. Of course, making the high-quality content available on the website will lead to create the trustworthiness of your website. Try to educated the people through the information in such way that every time they face any issue they must look up to your website, make them addictive of your website. Rich content also fuels SEO.

Agile

Scalability and flexibility are characteristics of a good software architecture, former refers to further development of the software and latter refers to alteration of functions. Approach of software development must be focused on developing an agile environment. It’ll help to cater the changes which are inevitable in the future.

Security

Implementing securities so software functions remain unharmed with the attacks, injection and hacking. Without a doubt, creating a secure environment is a serious step, which should not be ignored. Otherwise, it may tarnish a reputation, invite legal actions, create financial loss, and additional fallouts.

Speed

Researchers have found that 53% of mobile website visitors will leave if a webpage doesn’t load within three seconds and 40% of people abandon a website that takes more than 3 seconds to load. No matter how aesthetically pleasing a website is or how well it educates, if it isn’t swift, user switches to other options.

Frequently Asked Questions