The importance of travel apps for the industry is becoming more and more obvious, with major companies like Booking.com even choosing an app-first approach. In that environment, providing users with an app becomes a must, since they are already accustomed to their speed and convenience.
However, there are many ways to build an app, each with its own benefits and downsides. When choosing the right technology can define whether an application will be a success or a failure, learning all about this topic beforehand becomes crucial.
To help you make an informed decision, we asked a team of app developers for travel companies about the four main app development approaches, their advantages, and potential limitations. Now, let’s jump right into it!
Native development
Let’s start with native travel app development since it is the most straightforward option. The native approach means building a separate app for each specific platform — iOS and Android. It is easy to see why one would choose this option: using native languages and tools like Swift for iOS and Kotlin for Android offers the best performance and provides access to all native features and APIs.
However, native development has significant downsides that you should know about before considering it for your app. Building two separate native applications is much more time-consuming than other development options, and it heavily increases development costs. It also requires finding a team that has expertise in building and launching apps for both platforms.
So, who would benefit from native development? In our opinion, this approach is best suited for businesses that intend to rely on their apps heavily in the future, know how to benefit from access to platform-specific features, and can afford the associated development costs.
You might think that there’s an option to build a native app for just one of the platforms to save time and money, but we would strongly argue against it. While it might be a decent choice for some specific companies in other industries, travel apps are very different and almost always benefit from a wider reach. If you want an app that offers most of the benefits of native development but requires less investment, consider a cross-platform approach.
Cross-platform development
As you can guess from its name, cross-platform development means creating a single codebase that works for both iOS and Android. We consider this approach to be quick and cost-efficient not just in comparison to native development, but in general as well.
The most popular tools for cross-platform development include React Native and Flutter, and we find the former to be superior when it comes to building travel apps.
React Native framework uses a very popular programming language and offers thousands of open-source modules and libraries. It also allows developers to write reusable code components that can be shared between different parts of the app, reducing costs, ensuring consistency, and speeding up iterations. Finally, it offers excellent integration capabilities, enabling easy third-party API connections — from maps to payment gateways.
In our opinion, cross-platform development suits most travel businesses that aim to reach wide user audiences without heavy investments.
Hybrid development
Hybrid travel app development involves creating a web application and placing it in a container within the app. What that means is that for some pages and features your app will act as a web browser, while other features will be native. To achieve that, this approach uses HTML, CSS, and JavaScript wrapped in a native container.
Hybrid apps can be developed rather quickly and work well enough, but no matter how you put it, web view components will always be very limited by their nature. They are also rather slow, especially when compared to cross-platform or native apps. Unfortunately, these performance limitations may also have their toll on user experience — modern users are accustomed to lightning-quick apps from your competitors.
In general, hybrid development may suit your business if you are looking to balance cost and time efficiency with the need for some level of access to native features. However, if you plan for a long term and want a highly competitive application, you should consider cross-platform or native approaches.
App builders
If you want an even cheaper and quicker solution, then you can resort to app builders — platforms that allow you to create apps with minimal or no coding involved, offering pre-built templates and drag-and-drop interfaces. App builders generally offer subscription plans that are accessible to small businesses and entrepreneurs.
App builders are quick and cheap, but you pay in other ways. As you can imagine, these platforms offer very limited customization and almost no flexibility when it comes to both design and functionality — you won’t be able to build anything other than a very basic application.
Another downside is that the resulting app won’t be scalable at all, meaning that if you require adding complex features in the future, you would still have to invest in building a custom app.
Finally, app builder applications may not perform as well as custom apps, especially under heavy usage, which is a huge deal if you plan on significantly growing your audience.
In our opinion, choosing app builders is only justified when you are certain that the resulting basic app is all you will ever require — otherwise, you should consider other development options.
Conclusion
Choosing the right technology for developing your travel app depends on your specific needs, budget, and timeframe. If we were to name the most cost-effective approach that doesn’t hurt your app’s quality, we would go for cross-platform development. However, if you have a considerable budget and can afford to wait for a little longer, native development can offer even more in terms of using a platform’s capabilities to their fullest.
Hybrid development is also a decent option, especially if you want to spend less time and money on the development process. However, this approach won’t provide you with a fully scalable and customizable app, and the performance will be limited as well. Finally, we would say that app builders should be used only if you are certain that the resulting app is all you will need in the long run.
