Create a Travel Portal: 10 Tips for Creating a Professional Travel Platform

Everyone is familiar with online travel platforms, such as the market leader Expedia. Unlike a traditional online shop, a travel platform allows you to book trips and holiday apartments or holiday homes. On some platforms, it is also possible to book the flight or, for example, train tickets for the journey. Payment and infrastructure are organized through the website. The customer has the option to choose from several payment options, such as direct debit, invoice, credit card, PayPal, etc. If you are planning to create your own travel portal, then you will find seven expert tips in this article to help you succeed with your project.

The Essentials at a Glance

Which Online Platform Would You Like to Create?

Examples of Well-Known Travel Portals

What Exactly is a Travel Platform?

A travel platform is a platform for booking trips, holiday homes, holiday apartments and, in many cases, flights and train journeys. In addition, some travel portals offer further functions or have specialized in a specific area. For example, there are portals that specialize in language and study trips, while other platforms also list youth hostels, etc. 

If you do not go directly to a travel agency to book a trip and receive advice, the booking is done via an online travel portal. In recent years, there has been an enormous increase in this area. Like most businesses, travel is now mostly booked online via the internet. 

Consequently, the range of such portals on the internet is huge today. In addition to large portals like Neckermann or Expedia, there are also various small portals, such as the website fluege.de, which is dedicated specifically to flight searches. It is a lucrative business, and that is probably also the reason why there are always new travel portals on the market. On the other hand, the sector is also fiercely competitive and there is a lot of competition.

Airbnb is the leading travel platform in the market

Tips for the Successful Development of a Travel Portal

There are many reasons to create your own travel portal. You have already encountered some of them in this article. You have also learned that this undertaking is a very complex and labor-intensive project. Thorough planning and preparation, as well as sufficient capital, are important factors. In this section, we will show you our expert tips to help you succeed with the development and planning of your online platform on the internet.

1. What Type of Travel Platform Do You Need?

There is a wide variety of online portals. They differ in terms of features as well as complexity. In addition, there are differences in how the platforms are structured. Many simple portals can be found, for example, as plugins for common CMS like WordPress or Drupal, while more complex systems often have to be custom developed.  

The first decision you must make when creating an online platform is what type of platform it will be. Should it be a basic platform with simple features? Or do you perhaps need a platform that is a bit more sophisticated? For professional and paid portals, you usually cannot avoid a complex and elaborate platform, as ready-made solutions and plugins typically do not provide sufficient functionality and flexibility.

You must therefore consider in advance what goals you want to achieve with your job portal and which functions the platform should or must fulfill. The decision you make here also has a lasting impact on costs. 

The more complex and extensive the online portal, the higher the effort and, accordingly, the greater the required capital. If you plan carefully from the beginning, you can save money in the early stages of developing your online platform.

Before you continue with the development of a job platform, you need to be clear about what type of platform you want to create and where it will be used. In many cases, a simple or medium platform is sufficient. Only in truly special cases is it necessary to have a complex travel portal developed from scratch.

2. Financing Your Travel Platform

The next important step that you must address, which is directly related to the point mentioned above, is the financing of your online platform. The development of your portal is costly, and expenses arise that you have to cover for the development, usually without the platform generating any income. Financing is therefore an important factor to consider. 

Fundamentally, there are two options here. Either you have the capital to have your own platform of this kind developed and pay the resulting costs out of your own pocket. Then, of course, you can start immediately and begin the development of the platform, and nothing stands in the way of the project launch. 

In most cases, however, you will not have enough capital, but only a partial amount available. In this case, you must look for other ways of financing. One possibility is banks and financial institutions, which usually have no problem granting a loan, especially to businesses. An alternative, particularly in this context, is crowdfunding.  

This means you present your project on a crowdfunding platform such as Patreon or Kickstarter, and have the development financed by interested parties in the form of pledges. For this option to work, you need a certain amount of your own capital and must create a prototype of your platform. In addition, you must use information, videos, and marketing to draw the attention of potential investors to your project and convince them to support you financially. In return, the backers receive something from you. That could be a free membership or a free advertisement on your platform, but also something else. Here, your creativity is required. Basically, anything that can excite customers or investors is possible.

3. Let’s Get Started – The Kick-Off for Your Travel Portal

Once you have developed a concept for your online portal and secured financing, the starting signal can be given. It’s time to get down to business, and the development of your job platform begins. It is important here to collaborate with a professional agency, such as Shopboostr. We have repeatedly accompanied the development of various online platforms, online shops, and other applications, and we have been experts in this field for several years. However, for the development of your online platform to be successful, you must consider a few things. The most important of these points are: 

• An excellent idea: Why should someone invest in your project? 
• A strong development team that programs the platform.
• A team for community management and the building of a community.
• A cooperation with travel agencies, hotels, and airlines that will use the portal.
• A well-written white paper that presents your project in detail
• Professional marketing on specialized portals and on social media
• A strong management team
• A professional agency that implements your ideas and concepts.

Booking.com is one of the classic travel portals

4. Your Idea and Its Implementation

For your project to be successful, you need an idea. This simply means that you must solve a problem or offer a service that is interesting to customers and convinces investors to invest in your venture. Among other things, you must also consider that there are now many competing platforms of this kind on the market. They have also been active for a longer time and offer a wide range of services and features. Often, many ideas already exist. Your idea is almost certainly already represented, so you need to make it clear to investors why they should invest in your platform and not in a competitor’s project, or why they should choose you.

It is best to ask yourself whether you would invest in your own project and why, or whether you would examine it yourself or choose another platform and why. Look at the problems that other projects, especially those with a similar or identical offering as yours, are facing. Then consider how you would solve these problems and become better than the competition. Then you are on the right track. The field is fiercely competitive and there are many competitors.

In some cases, it may be necessary or sensible to specialize in a specific area. For example, you could concentrate on a particular demographic or professional group, such as public service, students, etc. This would give you a certain significance compared to the numerous general platforms. Additionally, you could develop into an expert in the industry.

5. Start Small with the Programming

The development of a complete online platform is very complex and extensive. This is especially true if you want to have a sophisticated online portal custom-built. In this case, you cannot use a CMS or existing software and adapt it for your purposes. This means that very high costs can arise. Additionally, many CMS are open-source software and can therefore be used by you free of charge; you only pay for the custom adaptation. With a sophisticated platform, however, everything must be built from scratch. Programming therefore consumes a large part of the budget.

We therefore recommend that you start small. Develop a prototype and the basic structure (MVA). Everything you need to promote your project and attract investors. Once you have achieved this goal, you can use the prototype to secure more capital, with which you can then continuously expand the prototype. Avoid trying to perfect everything right from the beginning. In the worst case, you will end up without capital and without investors because you do not have a prototype that you can use for fundraising and marketing.

6. Assemble a Team of Professional Programmers

For the programming of your online platform, you need an experienced team of professional programmers. The implementation of your portal as well as the underlying technology are complex areas. Accordingly, you need various developers who not only master different programming languages, but ideally are also familiar with the respective industry or niche. 

Just as the project team and the advisors must convince the investors, your programmers must also do so. The best ideas mean nothing if there is no possibility to put them into action. Experts and investors in the field are very knowledgeable here and will particularly ensure that your idea can indeed be implemented by you. For this very reason, a prototype may be useful. With it, the programmers can demonstrate their expertise in practice.

7. Build a Team of Partners and Experts

Before your platform can go live, you need to build a professional team. You need administrators who take care of new members, registrations, possibly certificates, etc. You need IT personnel who maintain the platform and handle security as well as technical issues. You may also need community managers, etc. But most importantly, you must have a competent network of experts. Additionally, you require airlines and hotels as well as travel agencies, etc., who cooperate with your portal and refer customers to you or offer their services.

The Most Well-Known Travel Platforms

Simple, Complex, or Advanced? What Makes Sense?

We cannot give you a one-size-fits-all answer to this question in this article. It depends on the project, the features, and your individual undertaking. In most cases, in our opinion and experience, a simple or a complex platform is sufficient. These already offer many functions and cover all important options. A custom-developed, individual platform is only necessary in the rarest cases, namely when the available simple and advanced solutions cannot provide you with the required functions and these cannot be subsequently programmed in.  

We recommend that you consult an expert for this decision at an early stage. Shopboostr is your expert for travel portals, online shops, and other online platforms. Our team is happy to provide you with individual, non-binding advice, and if desired, we are also willing to accompany you with your project. Simple, straightforward, and from the very beginning

Conclusion and Summary

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