All my travel memories start with searching for something on Booking.com. I can still remember my first booking experience 5 years ago. I was a bit skeptical at first but was quickly pleasantly surprised.
From creating an account to finding an apartment to completing the transaction and payment was fantastic. Everything was super intuitive. Since that day I’ve used the website 25 times and although some things have changed I still enjoy using it.
Reading: How to create a website like booking.com
But what if you want to create something similar but even better? How do you proceed? If these are the questions you keep asking yourself, this article is for you!
What is Booking.com?
Booking.com was founded in 1996 in Amsterdam as a small Dutch startup. Geert-Jan Bruinsma noticed a gap in online hotel reservations and decided to create a travel metasearch engine.
Booking.com’s mission is to “it to make the world easier for everyone’. It is available in 43 languages and offers more than 28 million accommodation listings. In addition to hotel bookings, booking.com also offers a wide range of flight tickets, rental cars and taxi services.
How is the reservation market developing?
The income of Booking Holdings from 2007 to 2019 is shown a steady growth. In 2019 they generated $15.07 billion in revenue, and if you compare it to 2007, it’s almost a $14 million difference. The ability to make hotel reservations and other travel-related services online has made trip planning much easier and faster.
What are the core functions of booking platforms?
In general, we can subdivide these functions in two categories: those for customers who want to rent accommodation and those for the owners of these apartments / hotels.
Customer functions
On the first visit to booking. com you will see features like:
- login/register – You can register/login via email or through third-party accounts on Facebook, Google or Apple.
- Personal Information / Dashboard – User profiles display basic information such as profile picture, name, age and county. Your personal dashboard stores information about your recent reservations, payment information, and reviews
- Search bar – the core feature of the site that allows you to search by hotel name by city. You can add the number of people you want to book for or the number of rooms to your search. Additionally, you can filter the results by price, reviews, meals, etc.
- Geolocation – The map shows the location of the accommodation and can measure the distance between different places such as train stations and Sights.
- Ratings and reviews – After each reservation you can answer some questions about your stay. Booking.com gives you the opportunity to rate staff, facilities, cleanliness, comfort, etc. You can add photos and other comments to your review.
- mobile application – booking.com’s mobile phone With the application you can rent an apartment, get directions and plan your trip including popular Planning tourist attractions.
Hotelier functions
- Property management – you can register your property in a few clicks. Owners can add details such as number of rooms, beds, parking, meals available, etc.
- Booking Management Dashboard – If your property goes on sale, you will be notified by email . Bookings can be confirmed or canceled from the tenant dashboard.
How to make money on a booking site?
There are three main business models used to generate revenue Agencies to be generated from trips: advertising business model, dealer business model and agency business model. You can choose a dominant one, but also use others like Booking.com.
Advertising business model – TripAdvisor
At TripAdvisor, revenue is based on cost-per-click advertising placed on the website is shown. Ad owners pay TripAdvisor a fee when a user clicks on the link that redirects him/her to the advertiser’s website.
Merchant business model – Expedia
In this model, the travel Website is a retailer and the bookings are made on the website itself. These types of travel agencies buy a large number of hotels or hotel rooms to resell them through their website or application.
Agency Business Model – Booking.com
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Booking.com is an example of an agency business model. In this model, the travel website is a link between travelers and service providers and charges a commission for each transaction. Booking.com charges between 10% and 30% of every transaction made.
Booking.com bases 74% of its revenue on the agency business model, but also includes the merchant business model and the advertising business model with 19% and 6.6% of sales.
What should you know before you start building a booking system?
When you think about a new booking system, the first thing to do is to study the competition . You need to know what people want and what the market is missing. Perhaps travelers need more hotel rooms that allow pets? Or do you have special requirements for hypoallergenic bedding?
Know your competitors
The current travel market offers many solutions similar to Booking.com, so you need to find a good niche target. Booking.com currently competes with giants like TripAdvisor, AirBnB, HomeAway or Trivago.
You need to know your customers to be successful. This will help you find a group of people with similar needs. With this knowledge, you can develop the right marketing strategy and beat the competition. Maybe the target customers are looking for hotels with jacuzzis? You can use HotelJacuzzi or explore a specific region – you can go to Visit Australia or Life Elevated?
“Success is going from failure to failure without losing enthusiasm” – Winston’s Churchill
Validate your idea
Founding a startup may seem risky, but you should always have faith in your product. It will certainly help to validate your idea before launching it and create a business plan. Some startups choose to outsource the development of their solution. An experienced team of engineers can definitely help you figure out the details. By contacting our Selleo team, you will get answers to burning questions and get an estimate of the development time.
Offer discounts
In the beginning you definitely face the problem, that it does not have enough reviews and ratings. Most users like to use websites that have some credibility. I personally think it’s a good idea to offer premium access with additional features for the first few weeks or months. You can also offer discounts and lower your prices. This gives you the opportunity to attract users and gain their trust and loyalty.
How much does it cost to build a website like Booking.com?
This question is not a clear one have answer. The price depends on many factors such as tools used, design, functionalities. The more complicated the website, the more hours your developers spend creating it.
Why do startups fail?
Statistics show that startups fail within just 20 months. I’m not saying this to scare you, but to raise awareness of some of the most common issues.
An obvious reason for failure is the lack of innovation in your product. As I mentioned above, the market is full of booking solutions, so you have to come up with something unique. The second problem is lack of money. This can also be remedied by creating a business plan and making a rough estimate of the time and resources it will take to create the end product.
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Another problem that leads to failure is poor marketing and a user-unfriendly product. Your website should be easy to use and all marketing strategies should be aligned with your business mission.
How to create a successful travel website in 4 steps?
Step 1: UX/UI
An interesting but simple and intuitive UX/UI is crucial for a good website. In this step, you should know your expectations. In any case, when you talk to a development company, you will be asked for detailed information about your idea. You then create a mockup based on that.
Step 2: Backend Coding
A backend developer will talk to you about the general architecture of the website. You should tell him the features and fields required to make a reservation. The developers create models/graphics of how everything should work. After your feedback and approval, the coding begins. Although the backend is the part of the website that is not visible to the end user, it is crucial. Server validations, routes between pages, fields and security concerns. At Selleo we work on the basis of Scrum – so you will be regularly informed about the progress.
Step 3: Frontend coding
While the backend is in progress (or even finished) and the design is ready, the front-end team will push the design into the code. Developers work closely with the graphic design team to deliver the best possible product. The code is tested on the latest and most popular browsers to ensure there are no bugs and issues with your product.
Step 4: Release Time
When an application is ready , it will be pushed to a hosting (e.g. AWS, Heroku) and your customers can start using it. Of course, the work doesn’t end there – there are many places that can be improved.
You should always strive to improve your website to keep up with trends and meet the needs of your customers.
Conclusions
Creating your own “booking site” can be a daunting process, but even with the amount of competition in the market, new startups are popping up all the time.
There are three models for making money from travel websites: Advertising, Dealer and Agency. Of course, you can combine them just like Booking.com.
Choosing one of the models will help in the development estimation and also give the development team a certain spectrum of knowledge about your proposal and how to proceed.
The Selleo team can build a fully functional, great travel website for you from scratch. Our full team of engineers can take care of front-end, back-end, UX/UI, QA etc. while you have time to focus on other business processes.
Get in touch Contact us and arrange a call!
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