Nowadays, travellers are becoming more independent than before; they don’t want the help of a travel agency to plan a trip. This is the reason for the growth of different online travel marketplaces that provide the facility of flights, hotels, and other experiences online.
Companies such as Airbnb, Headout, TripAdvisor, and other travel marketplaces have already reached the heights of success, and now you also can! So, what are you waiting for; just start an online travel marketplace today!
What is an Online Travel Marketplace?
So, before proceeding with anything let’s see what the travel marketplace is. It’s the platform that connects travel service providers to their customers. The providers list their sightseeing tours, packages, hotel bookings, etc. Customers go through the online marketplace and select the one as per their desires and requirements.
The cost of designing and launching the online travel marketplace relies on numerous factors:
- Scope of features
- Estimated time for developing the platform
- Number of developers, QAs, and so on working on your project
Why You Must Create Your Own Online Travel Marketplace?
Vacations never get outdated. The foremost thing that people do when planning a vacation is looking for the best places online that they want to visit. So, when it’s about online travel marketplaces, people look for great deals along with user-friendly sites and apps. So, you can create an online travel marketplace by doing proper research that makes your site appears different from your competitors.
Steps For Creating Your Online Travel Marketplace
Here we have jotted down a few steps for creating your online travel marketplace.
Find a Niche
Being specific makes the process of targeting easier. Just similar to Expedia and other major giants, one can select multiple niches too. Focusing on a particular niche will narrow down the buyer segments for creating tailored marketing campaigns. For instance, if the marketplace that you are creating focuses on adventure activities, then you can run a campaign to attract customers who are interested in doing adventure and outdoor activities.
Make a Business Plan
You must have a proper business plan to ensure the marketplace that you are launching is financially and practically viable. So, below given are a few things that you need to consider:
- Who are your customers?
- What are your objectives?
- How much investment does your marketplace platform need initially?
- How many specialists do you need to hire to launch it?
- What income are you expecting from your travel marketplace?
- How can you minimize the failure risk?
Build a Travel Marketplace
Plan the visual hierarchy as well as navigation system carefully, after that, think about the features that you want to include in your marketplace.
Add Content
Quantity, as well as quality, are vital for creating a great travel marketplace. The marketplace that you create must have high-quality images. You can stand ahead of your competitors by uniquely creating well-written descriptions.
Launch and Promote
This is the stage that requires the help of the marketing team. Like, SEO experts will look for the most popular keywords, copywriters to start an interesting blog, SMM specialists to promote the platform through social media, and so on.
Features to Include in Your Travel Marketplace
There are a few important features that you must ensure to include in your online travel marketplace. Let’s have a look at them:
- Powerful Search Filters: Online marketplaces have powerful search capabilities. So, an appropriate search box with sorting features, well-organized categories, fine-grained filtering, etc., will help your customers find out what they want.
- Mobile Experiences: You must make your website mobile-friendly for those who wish to access the site without using the app.
- Tour Page: This page must have numerous high-resolution images along with detailed information about the place.
- Reviews and Ratings: Travelers can leave reviews and look for the ratings of places. Even you can also create a type of community that allows travellers to share their experiences.
- Online Payment: Provide customers with more online payment options. Also, ensure the prices are straightforward without any hidden charges.
- User Profile: Do you know the foremost thing customers want to do on any travel marketplace? Create their personal accounts! To make the process simple, you can offer registration through email or social media. Also, it enables language choices and currency. At times, travellers select their native language but wish to look for prices in USD only.
- Popular Destinations: Customers who have no idea about the activities want something that can help them. So, you can assist them by using blocks of destinations. This can be labelled trending, recommended, popular, etc.
- Listing Page: The listing page must display tour thumbnails and their descriptions along with the price.
Wrap Up
So, let’s conclude this blog with the hope that it will be going to help you in creating an online travel marketplace. A large number of people wish to travel, so they require a medium that is both convenient and helpful, like the online travel marketplace.
In short, an online travel marketplace will benefit customers in every way, and that is the reason for their popularity. With every passing year, the online travel marketplace’s demand will go high only.
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