Over the last decade, travelers expectations for customer service have shifted dramatically. People are comfortable using their cell phones to book hotels. In 2023, the number of people using hotel booking apps is estimated to reach 823,6 million.
Hotel Booking Apps: The Way to Boost Your Business
Hotel aggregators, online travel agencies, and hotel websites must now capture omnichannel customers that use desktop, mobile browsers, and apps. It’s time to consider developing a hotel booking app if you want to meet people’s expectations in terms of hotel booking, in-destination check-in, and customer service.
Travelers decisions are influenced by hotel reservation apps. The following are some of the outcomes of hotel booking application development for a business.
- Improved customer service. Late registrations are easier to manage and long lines at reception are avoided with apps that offer quick check-in and key digital functionalities. This improves guest satisfaction and staff efficiency.
- Mobile hotel reservation software, like any other automation tool, saves time and money for your personnel. Reducing the amount of paper printed in your hotel helps to make it more environmentally friendly.
- Mobile solutions aid in user engagement and two-way communication. A branded mobile app can be an effective marketing tool for reaching out to and converting your target demographic. It will result in the formation of a small marketing group of highly engaged clients. Room upgrades, restaurant reservations, and other services will be encouraged through in-app messages, chatbots, push notifications, and emails. Hundreds of prospective guests will be conversed with by your team’s digital extension.
How to Create Hotel Booking Apps for iPhone?
The widespread use of mobile devices provides a new opportunity for hospitality firms to communicate with and serve guests throughout their journey.
They may better engage visitors with additional features on mobile apps and deliver a convenient guest experience before and after their stay by using a multi-channel approach. So let’s look at the steps to create a hotel booking app for iPhone.
- Conduct market and user research, analyze the best hotel booking applications in your niche and determine the key concept for your future app.
- Create a distinctive value proposition for the hotel reservation app, as well as a selection of distribution channels.
- Functional specification and prototyping will aid in the testing and approval of ideas with stakeholders and end-users, as well as the definition of the scope of work and budget for your minimal viable product (MVP).
- User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) design aimed at an intuitive and simple user flow as well as a pleasing appearance.
- Front-end and back-end development for mobile applications. Integrations with booking engines, payment gateways, hotel property management systems, customer relationship management systems, and other software will be used to ensure that your hospitality business’s sales and operations run smoothly, safely, and without errors.
- Thorough testing at all levels to guarantee that the hotel reservation app is efficient, user-friendly, and quick.
- Creating a marketing strategy for your application.
- The software will be available for download on the Apple App Store.
What You Should Know Before Developing an App: The Best Features of Hotel Booking Apps
- Your hotel must be mobile-friendly for travelers. Saving user information and payment in the hotel booking application is a sign of a well-executed app that can provide an excellent experience for a guest. Visitors will simply require a few clicks to reserve a room. This is good news for a modern traveler, who is increasingly using their mobile devices to make purchases and book travel plans while on the go.
- Hotel apps can connect and consolidate guest information. Consider a gateway that keeps track of your customers’ in-house activities and booking patterns, such as whether they schedule an order room service, request housekeeping, or make dinner reservations. You’ll be able to collect crucial intelligence that will help you better anticipate guest’s wants, and construct relevant marketing programs to upsell services during that guest’s future stayings if you connect your hotel app to CRM.
- Customer Relationship Management is a special approach to doing business, in which the customer comes first. The main goal of the CRM strategy is to create a single ecosystem to attract new and amplify existing customers.
- Both brand and client loyalty can be bolstered by a hotel app. The mere presence of the app on a person’s smartphone will keep your brand top of mind when it comes to booking a hotel. Your mobile hotel booking app is most effective when it is integrated with your guest loyalty program. Guests will earn points for their hotel stays and direct reservations, which they can then redeem for rewards. After guests have checked out, the hotel can utilize the app to collect reviews.
- A hotel app also enables your hotel to offer enticing features, such as keyless entry, real-time service notifications and room service requests. Also, for the convenience of visitors, you can create a late booking hotel app, which makes it incredibly easy to find and reserve a room. All of these extra features provide guests with more convenience and a better experience, increasing their pleasure and loyalty.
- Hotel apps bring guest-staff communication to a whole new level. Your employees may reply to customers’ requests and provide them with real-time updates via a hotel app. For example, being able to send a message to a guest informing them that their room is being cleaned or that the dinner will be delivered in a few minutes.
