Traditional: 7-12 months, ₹70L-1Cr. With AI: 10-14 weeks, ₹45-65L. MakeMyTrip, Goibibo-like travel apps built 40% faster with AI.
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) like MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, and Cleartrip dominate India's ₹4 lakh crore travel market. Building an OTA platform traditionally takes 7-12 months and ₹70L-1Cr. With AI-accelerated development, the same platform ships in 10-14 weeks at ₹45-65L. This guide breaks down exact costs for flights, hotels, holiday packages, and bus booking features — based on travel platform projects delivered by Boolean & Beyond from Bangalore and Coimbatore.
A traditional OTA platform requires 10-16 engineers building complex integrations: GDS connections (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport) for flight inventory, hotel aggregator APIs (Booking.com, Expedia Partner Solutions), bus and rail booking integrations, payment processing with multi-currency support, dynamic pricing engines, and comprehensive booking management systems. The 7-12 month timeline reflects the complexity of integrating with multiple travel suppliers, each with different API formats and authentication protocols. Cost breakdown: backend and supplier integrations at 35% (₹25-35L), web and mobile apps at 25% (₹18-25L), search and pricing engine at 15% (₹10-15L), payment and booking management at 15% (₹10-15L), and QA plus infrastructure at 10% (₹7-10L).
AI-accelerated development compresses the timeline by using AI-generated API integration code for GDS and hotel suppliers, AI-powered search algorithms with natural language trip queries, automated fare comparison and dynamic pricing logic, AI-assisted UI generation for complex booking flows (multi-city flights, room selection, add-ons), and automated testing across thousands of booking scenarios. The team shrinks to 6-8 engineers. Cost breakdown: backend and integrations at ₹16-22L, web and mobile at ₹12-16L, search and pricing at ₹7-10L, payments and bookings at ₹6-10L, and QA plus infrastructure at ₹4-7L.
Flight search and booking: Traditional ₹18-25L (6-8 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹10-14L (3-4 weeks). Hotel search and booking: Traditional ₹12-18L (5-7 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹7-10L (2-3 weeks). Holiday packages: Traditional ₹8-12L (4-5 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹5-7L (2-3 weeks). Bus and rail booking: Traditional ₹6-9L (3-4 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹3-5L (1.5-2 weeks). Dynamic pricing engine: Traditional ₹8-12L (4-6 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹4-7L (2-3 weeks). User reviews and ratings: Traditional ₹3-5L (2-3 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹2-3L (1-1.5 weeks). Loyalty and rewards: Traditional ₹4-6L (2-3 weeks) vs AI-accelerated ₹2-3L (1-1.5 weeks).
Building an OTA for the Indian market requires features that global platforms handle differently: IRCTC integration for train bookings, state-wise GST compliance on hotel bookings, UPI and EMI payment options (60% of Indian travel bookings use some form of instalment), vernacular language support for tier-2 city users, WhatsApp-based itinerary sharing and booking confirmations, and integration with Indian airlines' NDC channels. AI-accelerated development handles India-specific requirements efficiently — AI tools generate GST calculation logic, multi-payment gateway integrations, and vernacular booking confirmation templates in days.
Boolean & Beyond builds OTA and travel platforms from our offices in Bangalore and Coimbatore for travel startups, DMCs, and hospitality chains across India. Our tech stack includes Next.js for SEO-optimised search pages, React Native for mobile apps, Elasticsearch for fast fare search, Redis for caching supplier responses, and AWS for auto-scaling infrastructure during festive season traffic spikes. We integrate with Amadeus, Booking.com, IRCTC, and regional bus operators as part of our standard delivery. Contact our Bengaluru or Coimbatore team for a detailed OTA development proposal.
Traditional OTA (Online Travel Agency) platform development costs ₹50-1 crore and takes 7-12 months. AI-accelerated development reduces this to ₹25-50 lakhs in 3-5 months. Costs depend on the number of supplier integrations (GDS, hotel APIs, airline APIs), booking engine complexity, multi-currency/multi-language support, and mobile app requirements.
Must-have features include multi-supplier integration (flights, hotels, car rentals), real-time inventory and pricing, intelligent search with filters and sorting, secure payment processing (PCI-DSS compliant with Indian gateways), booking management and itinerary generation, user reviews and ratings, loyalty/rewards programme, multi-language and multi-currency support, and mobile-responsive design with offline access to bookings.
AI powers personalised travel recommendations based on user history and preferences, dynamic pricing optimisation, intelligent chatbots for booking assistance and post-booking support, automated itinerary planning, sentiment analysis of reviews, predictive analytics for demand forecasting and pricing, and visual search for destination discovery. AI-powered personalisation can increase conversion rates by 20-35%.
Let's discuss how we can help bring your ideas to life with thoughtful engineering and AI that actually works.
Get in Touch