Is MVP the Right Approach for the Travel Industry?

A popular approach for startups is to leverage a minimum viable product (MVP) to explore and precisely test an innovative business model. Successful businesses like Uber, Airbnb, Yelp, and Trivago initiated their way to winning status through MVPs.

So, if you are an entrepreneur with your travel app or looking to build one, it is vital to take an MVP approach. This specific approach will help you evaluate your travel app’s feasibility and functionality before putting too much time and money into development.

This blog post will discuss whether MVP is the right approach for the travel and tourism industry, look at the enablement of MVPs, and dive down for validating travel business concepts.

What has progressed as an outcome for the travel domain is a continuous development of fresh concepts and more testing of ideas.

More predominantly, the fact that not all business ideas are precise at the initial stages and not all concepts that look positive in the beginning are the next stage for your business is now precisely evaluated through Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

With the MVP model, your partners and loyal clients get to put those solutions into their operations quicker and offer you a true set of feedback, which can make your business methodology and product successful.

Minimum Viable Product (MVP) is a product development model with a minimal set of functionalities and features that may resolve a specific problem for your user base.

Here are the three proven practices of leveraging MVP for your travel industry project.

1)   For preliminary testing, you require to build the travel application with essential features

2)  Then, you test your travel business application MVP on the targeted audience and market

3)  And finally, find out whether your travel industry project has the probability to succeed

MVPs give you leverage when developing products by allowing decisive feedback from people who already or would use them – which means fewer pivots needed! They also help weed out ideas before going all-in with something that doesn’t fit well into either category; this reduces time wasted during the planning stages.

So, why should you develop a Travel App MVP? Let us further discuss it.

Now, what makes it imperative for you to build a travel MVP app? Let’s find out:

Please reflect that each added app feature, functionality, and design costs ample funds. However, you can invest minimal resources and build your project meeting the decided budget by enabling the mobile app MVP and thus test your travel business idea.

Any mobile or web app is a business project for appealing to customers and bringing in revenue. If you think your business concept has a bright future, quickly build the app MVP, and test it early for measuring future outcomes.

Contemplate that your travel application should resolve a specific problem. So, early-stage user and stakeholder feedback are vital for application development. Feedback comprises insights into the most looked-for features, undesirable app functionalities, and resolving user base challenges.

Relatively investing immense efforts, time, and budget on building a complete application that might lead to failure, you can craft a highly interactive app swiftly with MVP.

It would be best if you showcased something more than a project idea and concept to appeal to business investments. By building MVP for a travel startup, your business concept becomes more validated for investors and boosts perceived likelihood.

MVP helps define the particular project and product purpose. It also shapes the customer’s financial possibilities and assists in crafting the development strategy. You can enable all of these tasks parallel with MVP, intensifying project abilities in the progression.

Your application can create personal endorsements and recommendations based on the user base feedback. With this approach, you will better boost client retention rates and customer loyalty. This scenario is exclusively real if such recommendations are both thought-provoking and lucrative for all involved parties.

There are sufficient travel applications developed for diverse travel objectives and purposes. Some have a niche scope, like Google Maps, enabling route planning and navigation.

On the other hand, applications such as Meetup are utilized for searching and finding local events. TripIt and similar apps are multipurpose trip planning and organizing applications. Let us explore travel app MVP features and discover how to smartly enable an application functionality.

A fruitful travel app MVP should resolve the user’s challenges and problems. For instance, a travel booking MVP must comprise advanced search and modern-day filter functionalities to swiftly direct their user base for their digital bookings.

Above and beyond booking applications, travelers depend on trip planning apps, which are practical technology tools for dealing with all aspects of the planned journey. Most trip planning applications have a similar working concept, but they serve diverse travel goals and purposes.

The itinerary is a complete visualization of a travel plan, right from getting on the flight to checking in at the already booked hotel. It could also comprise locations of interest, travel exploration insights, details of nearby bars, restaurants, and tourism spots.

Many new apps even assist in planning road trip journeys and determining destinations, local attractions, and convenient stops along the trip.

In a while, after testing such a travel product on the marketplace, you may consider adding features like multilingual support, worldwide currency support, and other booking application functionalities.

As stated before, an MVP should have merely one or two specific functionalities that resolve a user’s real issue. Explore and discover more about travel app MVP features and functionalities

Also, let us further explore and discover how to better prioritize a travel application feature and functionalities list.

When you are precisely prioritizing a travel app feature list, always think and consider what your target audiences will expect from the solutions presented by you. Also, research and find what are their most needed business requirements along with precise market demands.

For instance, your travel application requires map functionality, so that your user base can easily access it from anywhere and anytime. So, geolocation functionality in your travel app is a must.

Even dynamic and digital booking services are the most required functionality as your target customer would requisite to book an accommodation or a flight ticket online.

Travel app features such as searching for itineraries and setting up trip schedules are even among the topmost preferences for users. The travel applications can also be enabled with the most needed functionalities like sending real-time notifications or quick alerts of any alteration in travel bookings.

Let us discuss some must-have, should-have, and cloud-have travel app features, which can better enable your travel application and make it more practical in usage.

They are the main functionalities of your app, and without them, your MVP would not work, or their exclusion would create major challenges.

Engagement and effortless communication are the prime must-have features of a travel application. Travelers move from one place to the other during their trip, and communication can be enabled by having a smartphone and leveraging a travel app. So, if the customer faces communication challenges with the travel app, for instance, if travel chat features are not intuitive, the users will uninstall your travel application.

They are less crucial, however, still quite significant features. Your MVP will be workable without them, but you should not leave them altogether.

They are the add-on features that offer your MVP a unique personality and differentiation, yet, your early app version could simply do without them.

Let us now suppose you already have an elementary vision of your Minimum Viable Product (MVP) and are required to decide on a suitable revenue model. It is better to plan your investment return right in advance; here are some monetization concepts that can enable your revenue generation structure and allow you to have a profitable business model.

There is no usage in crafting an advanced app if it is not profitable. So how you would make money from your travel application is the main concern. There are several monetizing strategies, but we have come up with the most promising approaches to make money from your travel application.

a)    In-App Ads: In this category, the advertiser pays the app owner for enabling ads on his application platform.

b)   Commissions: With this tactic, the application owner can charge or bill commission percentage on each digital transaction made by using his app.

c)   Premium Version: Here you can first provide the travel application with elementary features. However, ask for the fees to offer access to the modern-day and advanced functionalities. These functionalities could include special travel deals, in-flight food, on-sight accessibility of sim, and much more.

d)  In-App Purchase: This monetizing tactic enables the user base to make a purchase for added services in the application, while the app owner will bill the commission fees from each sale.

However, still, to initiate making a profit from your application, ensure that it is prevalent sufficiently amongst your targeted user base. And as we discussed, the best approach to get initiated with a travel application is to develop an MVP travel app that assists you in regulating how effective your travel app is for monetization. Also, you can find at an early stage whether your app is meeting the user base expectations or not.

Developing a travel MVP, with the most significant but limited functionalities, costs between $3000 and $60,000 and takes around two to three weeks. However, building a multifaceted, full-featured travel application is pretty expensive and time-taking, so you will face a more extended development period and costing initiating between $10,000 to $100,000+.

These prices are a rough average as the final project costing is completely estimated with respect to the set of advanced features, the platform you select, your project development model, and the rates of the travel app development company you hire.

The industry is already facing slower recovery, and specialists are comparatively hopeful about the future of the travel sector. In this market scenario, travel startups have an immense role to play in the industry’s repossession by bringing back confidence in travel and assisting the common user base in fine-tuning to the new normal.

If you are planning to invest in a travel application, an in-depth reflection of the existing and predictable travel trends is crucial so that you can release the specific project or product the user base demands.

Building an MVP first also enables you to test the application concept and entice a primary audience. In the case of fruitful achievement, a travel MVP can be further developed into a comprehensive featured application for a bigger marketplace and more audiences.

If you are a business owner looking to develop a travel application, you must have queries on the app features and the actual cost of a successful app taking into consideration Airbnb, Uber, Yelp, or Trivago.

Well, it will cost you a lot of your funds. However, before you take that step stirred by their winning business stories – here is a word of caution from the travel technology specialists at Techtic.

Techtic suggests developing a minimum viable product (MVP) to enable your travel app idea or business concept. Furthermore, the expert travel technology teams at Techtic recommend crafting a full-fledged travel app only once you are entirely influenced by its likelihood and requirements for the targeted audiences.

Techtic Solutions, being an MVP Development Company can help you build MVP for travel applications that can comprise innovative travel planning solutions. The travel app functionalities can further include digital booking features, navigation & geolocation functions, customer review & rating systems, taxi or cab services mobile solutions, and even craft the latest travel industry web portals.

You can speed up your Travel business MVP development through Techtic Solutions. MVP allows you to measure market requirements and industry potential and puts light on how your target audiences will discover your product with their perspectives. Many winning organizations initiated with precise MVP Development. To explore and discover more, download your MVP Template now!

You can always initiate your Travel app development with MVP and progressively enlarge its competencies, taking feedback from stakeholders and concerned user base. There are many techniques to monetize travel applications, so your investment will return back without many challenges.

At Techtic Solutions, being a top MVP Development Company, we believe doing is better than merely discussing projects. Ask yourself what challenges of users you require to resolve through your business, have a testing phase and then launch your product. Work on the transformation, craft a hypothesis, get your MVP out there, and then analyze the data gained. And repeat this procedure with complete focus.

So, now you know what an MVP is, and it’s standing in the travel industry. Building an MVP for a travel domain can minimize your investments and offer you better rewards that can go unnoticed without it. If you intend to develop an MVP for a travel application or a website, it is better to get in touch with us today itself.

Our travel industry proficiency, experienced resources, and technology specialization at Techtic Solutions are all that your business requires in the current scenario for swift success.