You are in a seabeach beneath an azure sky and a red sun. You bathe yourself in the calm waters and play in the sands. After having a relaxing day at the beach, you go to your hotel room with tons of facilities. When sleep envelopes all of your senses, you jump into a cozy bed. You believe that you are having the time of your life. But this is like a dream. In reality, having a tour and hotel booking can be quite troublesome. You can’t even find any hotels when you look for them. That’s why hotel booking apps are becoming popular every day.
What People Look for in a Hotel Booking App?
For adventure lovers around the world, hotel booking apps are a lifesaver. The hotel booking apps help them explore the world without having to book any hotels in person. People can book reservations and pay easily.
Most users want a simple app with a straightforward approach. They want to find the best hotels possible in the area they want to visit. The best part about a hotel booking app is its accessibility. They can use the app from anywhere.
16 Must-have Features in Hotel Booking Websites and Apps
Before you pack your bags and go for an adventure of a lifetime, you need to find a good hotel booking website. Not all websites are good. The best ones have some must-have features. So, without further ado, let’s check out the must-have features.
1. User-friendly Interface
This is the key to building a successful hotel booking website. For instance, take a look at ridesharing apps or on-demand service startups. This kind of apps has become popular because they have an easy user interface. Users feel comfortable navigating through their app.
A hotel booking website needs to be user-friendly too. There shouldn’t be any unnecessary pop-ups or fonts. It has to convenient, sleek, and easy to use. The pages should quickly load. Also, there shouldn’t be any technical issues. To make a smooth user-friendly interface, you need UI/UI design and development team.
2. Versatile Payment System
There are lots of payment methods a hotel booking website can integrate. Customers want versatility. Providing them with a wide range of payment methods increases the app’s appeal. Paying with a debit or credit card is a must. Also, you can add wire transfer, Paypal.
Only adding these methods isn’t enough. You have to ensure safe transactions. It’s easy for third-party apps to intervene. That’s why every hotel booking app needs a secure payment funnel.
Also, users hate to jump from one app to another to complete the transaction. So, make sure all the process occurs in the app. You can try to attract more customers by giving offers or discounts. During the festive season, you can allow customers to rent hotels with little down payment.
3. Automated Communication
Suppose a customer is going through your hotel booking app. After browsing for some time, they want to rent a hotel. But they can’t find the price of it. So, they try to communicate with you. Sadly, you were not online at the moment.
Without getting a response, the customer quickly goes to another website. This kind of incident can happen without the automated communication feature. You can’t be online at all times. Therefore, the app needs this feature to communicate with the customers right away.
When the customers reach out, the app can provide them with tips for traveling. Also, it can give information about the prices of certain hotels. When the customer confirms the booking, the app can send a confirmation email. All these make the app much easier to use. Many tech companies have already incorporated this feature into their websites.
4. Review Management
You go to an on-demand services app. You are in a hurry and want to connect with a service provider right away. What is the first thing you will notice when searching for providers? The reviews. This is our natural tendency. We want to connect with the best service providers. To find them out, reviews are the best way.
Review management is crucial. They act strongly to maintain your app’s reputation. Every single user at least goes through the reviews one time. They only use the hotels that have good reviews.
That’s why as a developer, you should encourage the users to leave reviews. This will increase the credibility of the app. The users will be able to find the best hotels by seeing the reviews. This will increase the loyalty of the customers.
5. Discounts and Promotions
The key to building a successful hotel booking app is to satisfy the customers. What better way is there to give out attractive discounts and promotions? There are tons of hotel booking websites.
Customers often compare the sites to see which one has the most reasonable price. When they see one with good deals, they make up their mind instantly. That’s why you should consider giving out discounts and promotions every once in a while.
At first, you may think that it is a lost cause. Why should you decrease the rates? Well, this is a marketing strategy. Most customers recommend the websites to their friends and families. So when they use your app and get pleased with it, they will recommend it to others. Therefore, your app will get more customers. In the long run, it will only profit your business.
6. Search Engine
Without this feature, any on-demand services app will be incomplete. Most users don’t know much about the hotels. They will search for hotels and prices in the search engine. That’s why your app or website must have a search option where users can get answers to their queries.
Make sure the app has autosuggestions. It will help the customers search with ease. The needs to have information about crucial topics like availability of rooms, timing, and price. So, the customer finds everything under one roof.
7. Image Gallery
An image speaks thousands of words. When was the last time you read lines after lines of complicated sentences? No one does. Everyone wants to know about a topic as fast as possible and a picture is the best method. That’s why rather than describing in words include pictures. Pictures garner the attention of the customers.
The images should be amazing in every aspect. It should capture the beauty of the hotels. Take pictures of different facilities and the luxuries of the hotels. Try to attach them to different segments of your app. The customers won’t be able to resist themselves.
8. Multi-linguistic Support
People from all over the world will visit your on-demand service’s app. When they will browse through your app, the first thing they will check if their preferred language is on the website. When it’s not, they will close the app right away. No matter how many features you provide, this is the make-or-break feature for them. That’s why your app must have the language the customers speak locally.
9. 24/7 Support
Technical issues can occur at any time. During the agile development process, the app can miss out on some minor issues. This can occur at a later stage when the customer starts using the app. This is completely normal.
But the most important part is being there when the customers face such issues. That’s why giving 24/7 customer service will ensure your companies success in the long run.
10. Central Reservation System
Travelers have tons of preferences. They can make reservations from different sources, platforms, or front desks. Managing all these can be troublesome. Errors can occur. That’s why having a central reservation system can ease out the whole process.
This will help you manage overbooking, double booking, or booking cancellations more effectively. This feature will give you real-time updates of all bookings. This can make the delivery fleet management and delivery order management system easier.
11. Map Service
We love to go into the unknown. Exploring new places has a thrill to it. But at the end of the day, we all need a map to guide us. Without having a map, anyone can get lost. That’s why you need a map service in your hotel booking app. Real-time order tracking will help users find the location of the hotels.
Also, you need to integrate this feature into the ios and android versions. Users won’t be able to use your website as they will be traveling. Therefore, you need to focus on android app development and ios app development.
12. Push Notifications and Alert System
The users won’t always stay on your hotel booking app. They have their everyday work. Sometimes they will even forget about their bookings. It’s your job to remind them of bookings, discounts, and other things.
This is a great marketing feature too. Most customers will only download the app and use it one time. They will either delete it or forget to use it again. When the app sends notifications to the user’s phone, they will have to use the app again.
That’s why this feature is quite important. It will keep alerting about the presence of the app. To incorporate this feature, you need good UI/UX design and development knowledge.
13. Weather Updates
You are all set for an adventure of a lifetime. You have packed your bags and booked the hotels. Everything is ready. You go to a ride-sharing app to get to the spot. When you reached your destination, you notice that there is a storm happening. What will be your reaction? All the hard effort of booking a hotel will go into vain.
A weather update feature will provide information about the current weather. Customers will be able to check the weather condition before traveling. By doing this they won’t have to face any such incidents. This is a feature that will make your app stand out among others.
14. Dashboard
Our lives are getting more busy day by day. We hardly have enough time to read through all the information in an on-demand services app. That’s why having a dashboard can be handy in a hotel booking app. Customers can quickly take a look at the essential data and information to book hotels.
They don’t need to spend countless hours reading thoroughly about every single thing. The dashboard should contain short information on conversion rates, bookings, and statistics. This feature also will increase the traffic rate on your app.
15. Social Media Sharing
We use social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter almost every day. That’s why customers love a hotel booking app that has a social media sharing feature. With this feature, they can share their favorite moments of the trip in their profiles. Also, they can recommend their friends to use the app.
16. Travel Arrangements
Booking the hotel isn’t the only thing travelers have to do. They need to book for transportations and restaurants as well. Handling so many things at the same time can be quite confusing. That’s why you can offer transportation booking or other facilities in your app. The app can provide services like renting a cab or booking flights.
This way, the customers won’t have to go anywhere else. They will be able to do everything they need for having an amazing trip in your app.
Final Thoughts
A good trip can change anyone’s life. It can take away all the tensions and hurdles we have to face every day. But to have a life-changing trip, you need a hotel booking website. Without a website or app, your trip can quickly turn into a nightmare.
That’s why, in this article, we talked about the 16 must-have features in a hotel booking app. Including these features will give the customers a once-in-a-lifetime experience.