Gilmar Travel

Today’s consumers expect to book their business and holiday trips quickly and easily. They value quality of service and expect a positive customer experience, which includes looking for cheap trips from the comfort of their sofa.

These tech-savvy consumers won’t become your customers unless you satisfy their demands for low-cost comfort.

If you’ve read our previous article, then you should already know how the online travel industry operates. In this article, we’ll talk a little about some tech niceties that will be shaping the world of online bookings in the years to come. It might equip you with new ideas for your travel booking app development.

Mobile technology

We’ve all been in a situation where we needed to book a flight or find a place to stay at the last minute. This situation might have popped up unintentionally due to a flight cancellation or because you missed the last train. But in fact, last-minute travel is a growing trend, especially among millennials who book trips spontaneously simply because they want to.

Tellingly, nearly half of all hotel reservations made within 48 hours of check-in are made through a mobile device according to Booking.com’s research.

People who are booking tickets in the days or even hours leading up to the start of vacation are usually doing so on the move and in a hurry. No wonder these bookings are made via mobile devices.

Last-minute travellers expect to find a good deal, and online travel agencies incentivize last-minute bookings by offering lower rates specifically aimed at mobile users.

But special rates isn’t the only tactic you can use to attract budget-conscious young consumers. As we’ve already mentioned, the quality of a service is just as valuable as the affordability of trips. To better serve your customers, you should understand the context in which mobiles users are interacting with your app.

Just like on-demand services like Uber, you can offer hotel rooms in a user’s vicinity (using GPS). You can also filter search results based on price, quality, and other criteria users have set up. If users have booked hotel rooms through your app previously, you can use information about past bookings to offer rooms that meet their preferences.

Additionally, you can integrate maps into your app to help users find their hotel from their current location by foot, public transport, or car.

If you decide to develop an on-demand hotel booking app, you should study user behaviour, track how far in advance your average user books trips, and modify your app’s offerings based on your findings.

[The Booking.com’s on-demand last-minute booking app. Image source: Juggernaut]

Predictive analytics

Technology is meant to make people’s lives better. When it comes to the travel industry, one way to make lives better is to make trips affordable for more people.

After booking a flight, how often have you thought: “I could’ve gotten a better deal” or “I should’ve booked earlier”? The process of booking flights is often painful, and the prices for tickets change constantly. You can never feel entirely comfortable that you’re getting a reasonable deal.

A lot of consumers experience this lack of certainty when booking flights unless they take advantage of an agent’s insider knowledge. But very few consumers use traditional agencies today, especially among those who regularly book flights. The good news is that modern technology can help people save money on flights without needing an agent.

Predictive analytics is the key to saving money. By analyzing flight itineraries and prices daily, algorithms can predict when airfares are cheapest and offer guidance to travellers.

This is exactly what the Hopper app does. Hopper searches through massive quantities of data to identify trends and price movements and suggest when users should book tickets and when they should hold off. It’s a great example for those want to develop a flight search app.

According to Patrick Surrey, chief data scientist at Hopper, the app is pricing about two billion itineraries every day, the result of 20 million flight searches daily. By applying predictive analytics to these data, Hopper can instantly let users know when tickets are a good deal and when prices are likely to go up. You can check out Hopper’s post about how they save their users’ money for details about their data analysis.

Hopper’s main purpose isn’t to sell tickets but rather to provide recommendations, which is why it’s so popular among its users.

[The Hopper app. Image source: Business Insider]

Virtual travel agents

Poor customer service is one of the biggest drawbacks of online travel agencies. Buying airline tickets and reserving hotel rooms is where many travel apps’ services end. Yet a lot of customers today expect support beyond the issuance of a ticket.

Virtual agents can make your app disruptive, personalized, and even authentic. There are already some examples on the market.

Google Trips is an undeniable leader here. Google Trips represents a mighty threat to large online companies like Priceline and Expedia. Alongside booking flights and accommodations, Google Trips provides users with personalized guides that can be accessed even in offline mode. These guides map out daily itineraries, suggesting things to do and places to go. Google Trips puts together guides by gathering your travel information from Gmail and Inbox.

Another travel giant entering the field of virtual assistants is Airbnb. Airbnb doesn’t just want to be an alternative to hotels; it’s growing into a full-service travel company. In November 2016, Airbnb launched a new feature called Trips, which is broken down into two features: Experiences and Places.

Experiences are activities organized by locals who earn some money by inviting Airbnb users to do things like go horseback riding or go fishing. Places provides recommendations from residents who bring local authenticity to travel and banish the bore of typical sightseeing.

[The Google Trips app. Image source: South China Morning Post]

Conversational interfaces

Another way to deliver great customer service through your mobile app is by implementing a conversational interface with a bot that can provide instant, automated support.

There are a lot of ways that bots can be implemented. Hipmunk, for example, has its “Hello Hipmunk” personal agent that addresses three different types of requests depending on the channel:

1. Flight and hotel options via email;
2. Personalized flight, hotel, and car rental suggestions via Google Calendar; and
3. Travel advice and recommendations via Facebook Messenger, Skype, and Slack.

Messaging platforms like Snapchat, WeChat, WhatsApp, and Messenger are emerging as a new way for hotels and airlines to engage with their customers. Serving customers with AI-powered conversational interfaces can be seen as the natural evolution of concierge services. The only thing is that unlike personal concierge services, which are often associated with luxury, bots are available to all customers. To build a bot is also much easier than to make a travel booking app.

We believe that the next step in conversational interface development is bots that understand voice queries. HelloGybe is one up-and-coming flight search app that uses natural language processing. The app simulates the experience of having a conversation with an actual travel agent; you can dictate a complicated itinerary involving multiple people, cities, hotels, and dates, and HelloGbye will make sense of all this and suggest options you might like.

Natural language processing technology is still in the early stages, which makes it problematic to work with. (This might be the reason why HelloGbye is still in private beta.) If you want to create a flight booking app that understands voice queries, you might want to wait until this technology evolves.

[The Hello Hipmunk bot. Image source: Hipmunk]

 

Virtual reality tours

It seems that the world has stopped talking about virtual reality for the moment. Virtual reality is a relatively new field that hasn’t been explored much by app developers yet. But VR has great potential in the near future.

In the travel industry, VR can offer a new way to help people decide where to go. Showing off destinations in virtual reality might generate more revenue for booking companies, as people are more likely to book a flight or room after experiencing what it feels like to be at a destination.

For example, a year ago we designed a virtual reality app called Ascape VR that works with Google Cardboard and other virtual reality headsets. Ascape VR provides 360 degree video clips and guided virtual tours of places and experiences around the world. The content for the app is provided by JetBlue, YP, Lonely Planet, and other travel brands.

[The Ascape app designed at Yalantis. Check it out on Dribbble and our blog]

Qantas is another VR app. Focusing on destinations in Australia, Qantas lets users experience the beautiful scenery before they book their flights. But streaming 360 degree videos of touring destinations through virtual reality headsets isn’t the only way that VR can be used by the industry.

Airlines, for example, can use immersive technology to demonstrate the differences between various cabin classes. This is what Lufthansa did at ITB Berlin 2015 – the world’s leading travel trade show. Lufthansa let visitors experience virtual airplane seats and virtual services onboard a virtual flight.

Here are some ideas for how to make use of virtual reality to promote your products and services and engage with potential customers:

• Showcase hotel rooms, venues, and amenities
• Offer virtual visits to conferences, clubs, parties, festivals, etc.
• Compare services of different airlines
• Let clients explore destinations from the comfort of your agency’s office couch
• Help your clients discover new places and experiences

You can surely come up with more ideas

We hope these five technology trends mentioned here will give you inspiration for how to develop a travel app that will be competitive on the market.

A zero-cash future might not be as close as some people predict, but in part it’s already here in the form of numerous payment services that allow people to send and receive money in real time – no need for checkbooks or cash withdrawal from ATMs.

Some of these services, like PayPal, are internationally popular, while others are confined to local markets (WeChat payments in the Chinese market, for instance). But whether local or global, payment apps are changing how we use money in our daily lives.

The universal popularity of mobile devices has helped certain types of payment apps like Venmoand clearXchange to grow quickly. Today we want to look at one other peer-to-peer payment service – Square Cash – in detail.

Square Cash is a product of Square Inc., one of the largest payment processing companies in the US market.

The Square Cash service allows friends to instantly send money to each other and allows businesses to accept card payments. In short, it’s a very convenient peer-to-peer payment application: sending money through Square Cash is almost as quick and easy as paying with good old cash.

[SquireCash. Image source: Inc.com]

As the product of an established company, Square Cash is part of a large ecosystem. Square’s products include payment and point of sale services as well as financial and marketing services. And with Square’s name recognition and reputation as a trustworthy business, the Square Cash app didn’t have a hard time acquiring users after it launched.

Square Cash is not the only software product Square has created: they also have the Square Register App (a free point of sale app for iOS and Android mobile devices), the Square App Marketplace, and other applications that allow business owners to integrate Square features. By releasing such a range of applications, Square has been able to create an ecosystem of software products that complement each other and have backed that ecosystem up with strong customer support.

Square Cash is free when you’re sending money to friends and family with your debit card. When sending money to the business, however, Square Cash business account  lets businesses request payments for goods and services with a 2.75 percent commission fee for each transaction. Square Cash for businesses lets business owners and organizations claim a unique username known as a $cashtag that they can then use to send and receive money. Users without a cashtag can use their mobile phone number as an ID to send and receive payments through the app. You don’t have to claim a cashtag to use the service, but it is the easiest way for customers to pay street vendors, florists, or freelance photographers and other owners of small businesses.

As of 2016, the Square also launched a virtual card, giving every user a Visa debit card number that they can use to pay wherever they would normally pay with Visa: online shopping sites or regular retail stores (at this point availability of the service only depends on the retailer).

The United States fintech landscape is dominated by a number of companies that provide payment services including personal peer-to-peer payments: PayPal, Venmo, and Square. Amazon, Facebook, and Apple recently joined the competition as well. Other markets – such as the Asian market – often use these same international options plus their own payment systems that are unique to a particular country’s market. In this highly competitive environment, every new app that hits the stores has to clearly indicate what sets it apart and makes it better than other payment services.

What are Square Cash’s advantages compared to its competitors?

• Square Cash is free for peer-to-peer personal payments and a charges fair commission fee for business transactions.
• Cash.me URLs by Square Cash let users send and receive money even if only one party has the app, which is convenient for businesses (in other words, a client can pay through Square Cash even if they don’t have an account). Small time brick-and-mortar businesses such as local flower shops can now get paid easily and gain name recognition.
• Square Cash payments are processed immediately; only rarely do they take up to two days to process (depending on the recipient’s bank).
• Square Cash provides a fast and convenient way for small businesses to request and receive payments using so-called $cashtags that are unique  to each user.

How does Square Cash ensure the security of their operations?

One significant concern that all fintech companies have to address at some point is the security of their service; all users of payment services wants to know what is being done to protect their financial data.

Square Cash contains a number of security features that are designed to prevent fraud or breaches of sensitive financial data:

1. A security lock feature that allows for Touch ID or CVV entry depending on a user’s choice.
2. Instant notifications via email, text message, or push notification if suspicious activity is detected in a user’s account.
3. Customer support and fraud protection services.
4. First level of PCI DSS certification (payment card industry data security standard).

PCI DSS is a set of security standards that was defined in 2004 by several major companies – Visa, MasterCard, JCB International, Discover Financial Services, and American Express. Being certified according to PCI DSS is a requirement for any company that processes credit or debit card transactions. This certification means that, even though there is no such thing as 100% safe digital transactions, transferring money with Square Cash is about as safe as using your Visa card at the supermarket. The fact that Square Cash has this certification is already proof enough for potential users who might be hesitant to try the Square Cash app for security reasons.

What monetization model does Square use?

Every fintech application has to figure out a healthy balance that allows its service to gain traction and at the same time remain profitable. For money transferring applications, monetization is often a question of picking the optimal commission fee for different types of clients.

In this regard, Square Cash is uniquely positioned among its competitors for a number of reasons:

1. Square Cash, being a part of the much bigger company, has a lot of financial backing, and consequently they had an opportunity to launch the first version of their service as a completely free app. This helped Square Cash app gain initial traction.  Square also passed on the traditional model of monetizing similar services using paid ads. Square states that they have no plans to show ads to their users, even if the brand that wants to be advertised does business with Square. Square can afford avoiding ads because they wants to draw users’ attention to how smoothly the service allows users to transfer funds. Smaller companies that are not affiliated with financial corporations or banks might not have an opportunity to start with a free version, and might have more difficulties with finding a profitable monetization strategy for their P2P app.
2. Companies like Square have multiple sources of revenue: transactions, software and data products, and SaaS services. Square Cash taps into the transaction revenue stream by charging 3 percent commission for transactions paid by credit card.. Square Cash is also working on developing premium features – for example, a paid plan that will let users enjoy the service internationally and not just in the US.

What does it take to build an app like Square Cash?

Square Cash, supported by Square’s security and name recognition, has been growing quite rapidly, with roughly $1 billion in transactions processed through the app in 2015. As of today, Square Cash has clearly become one of the leaders in the world of P2P payment solutions.

On top of the technical difficulties involved in developing a complex application that can handle a lot of data and exchange it with banks, creating a product like Square Cash poses a number of other challenges.

What can you do if you want to develop an app like Square Cash but can’t commit to a truly complex and expensive project?

Here’s a number of recommendations for how to get started based on the business models and success stories of Square Cash and other similar P2P applications:

1. Start with a smaller, regional market. Starting with a smaller market will give you a chance to find the optimal product–market fit and see how users respond to your service. This way you also won’t have to worry about competing directly with big players like PayPal right away. Not every peer-to-peer payment system has to go global to be successful: quite often regional banks invest into developing customized P2P platforms just for themselves.
2. Security is one of bigger pain points for financial apps. Users can forgive slightly laggy performance or even a clunky UI, but they want to be absolutely sure that their money and their personal information is safe. Getting certified according to the requirements of thepayment card industry will help you ensure that your service will be taken seriously and will have a good reputation in the field. Design your app’s architecture with a constant focus on security and reliability.
3. Go with third-party APIs and services wherever possible. There is little point in investing a lot of money right away into developing each separate feature from scratch if you are not certain how successful your product will be. Using third-party APIs is common practice when developing financial apps, and drives down costs. Third-party APIs can accomplish a lot of tasks; for instance, APIs such asSynapse Paylet you create secure accounts, send payments, and manage compliance, while the Dwolla API gives you the opportunity to connect your platform to the US banking system.
4. If you are building a standalone app and not a part of a bigger system, you might not have a luxury of ignoring paid ads as a potential source of revenue. Findinga monetization model for a new applicationcan be very tricky, and will likely involve compromise. There is nothing wrong with drawing revenue from several sources.
5. Invest in retaining customer trust: provide multiple support channels via online chats and email and make sure to respond to all requests and give detailed feedback. People do not take to it kindly if a money transaction doesn’t go through and they can’t reverse it or resend it.

How much does it cost to create an app like SquareCash?

Creating fintech software is always an expensive journey, and it takes a lot of expertise to build a peer-to-peer payment app that will be as successful as Square Cash. We looked into what makes a peer-to-peer payment app safe and convenient for users, and focused on most essential features such app should have. Here’s what we came up with:

We asked our developers to give us an estimate of how much a peer-to-peer payment app with these features will cost, and got the following answer: