Travel Website Development in India: Cost & Features (2026)
Founder & Lead Developer, Codingclave · 200+ projects since 2017
Travel website development in India costs ₹20,000 to ₹1,50,000 for a travel agency website with package pages and inquiry forms, ₹2 to 5 lakh once you add a booking engine and online payments, ₹3 to 8 lakh for a tour package portal with an itinerary builder, and ₹8 to 20 lakh for an OTA-style platform with flight and hotel APIs. Those are the prices we quote at Codingclave in October 2026, and I break them down by type in the table below.
I have been building travel and tourism websites since we started Codingclave in Lucknow in 2017, for travel agencies, tour operators and hotels. This guide covers what each type of travel website needs, what it costs, which integrations are worth paying for, and how to pick a travel website development company without getting burnt.
One number to keep in mind while you read: Phocuswright's India Travel Market Essentials report, summarised by Travel Extra in September 2026, puts the Indian travel market at $47.2 billion in 2026, up 13 percent, with 57 percent of bookings now made online. If your agency still takes bookings only on the phone, that 57 percent is going to someone else.
Travel website development cost in India (by type)
Here is the cost table I share with clients before we talk scope. Prices are our Codingclave quotes for Indian businesses in 2026, inclusive of design, development and one round of revisions, exclusive of GST and third-party fees.
| Website type | What you get | Development cost | Timeline |
|---|---|---|---|
| Travel agency website | 10 to 15 pages, package listings with day-wise itineraries, inquiry and WhatsApp forms, destination guides, reviews, admin panel | ₹20,000 to ₹1,50,000 | 2 to 5 weeks |
| Booking-enabled travel website | Everything above plus real-time availability, online booking, Razorpay or PayU payments, customer login, email and SMS confirmations | ₹2 to 5 lakh | 8 to 12 weeks |
| Tour package portal | Booking engine plus itinerary builder, seasonal and group pricing, B2B agent login with net rates, GST invoicing, CRM | ₹3 to 8 lakh | 10 to 16 weeks |
| OTA-style platform | Flight and hotel search through GDS or B2B APIs, multi-vendor booking and payouts, wallet, reviews, loyalty | ₹8 to 20 lakh | 16 to 24 weeks |
| Destination or tourism board site | Attraction and event listings, maps, multi-language content, media galleries, visitor information, accessibility compliance | ₹1.5 to 6 lakh | 6 to 12 weeks |
| Hotel or resort booking site | Room booking engine, availability calendar, channel manager sync, gallery, reviews | ₹1 to 3 lakh | 4 to 8 weeks |
| Mobile app (add-on) | Android and iOS app sharing the website's backend | ₹3 to 10 lakh | 10 to 16 weeks |
If you only need the first row, the fixed-price version is on our travel agency website page. For hotels and resorts, the booking site usually pairs with our hotel management software, and the wider hospitality work is on the hospitality industry page.
Running costs that are not in the development quote
These are the third-party fees clients most often forget to budget. Verified October 2026.
| Item | What it costs | Source |
|---|---|---|
| Payment gateway | Razorpay: 2% per successful domestic transaction, up to 3% on international cards, zero setup and zero annual fee, plus 18% GST on the fee | Razorpay pricing page |
| WhatsApp confirmations and marketing | Meta's India rate card: roughly ₹0.86 per marketing template and about ₹0.115 per utility template (booking confirmation), billed per delivered message | Meta rate card, see our WhatsApp marketing cost guide |
| Transactional SMS | ₹0.12 to ₹0.25 per SMS on MSG91 or similar, plus DLT registration | Vendor rate cards |
| Hosting | ₹1,500 to ₹5,000 per month for a VPS or managed Node.js host; ₹10,000 to ₹40,000 per month on AWS for an OTA with search traffic | Typical hosting bills |
| GDS or flight API | Amadeus, Sabre and Travelport price enterprise access on contract and it runs into lakhs per year; Indian B2B aggregators such as TBO and TripJack quote on request and bill per booking | Vendor sales teams |
| Channel manager | ₹1,000 to ₹4,000 per property per month for eZee, STAAH or Djubo tiers used by small hotels | Vendor pricing, detailed in our channel manager guide |
| Maintenance | 15 to 20 percent of the build cost per year for updates, security patches and small changes | Industry norm, matches our retainers |
What moves the price up or down
- Booking engine or inquiry form. The single biggest fork. An inquiry form is a day of work. A booking engine with seat inventory, holds, partial payments and refunds is six to eight weeks.
- Third-party integrations. Each GDS, hotel API or channel manager adds two to six weeks, mostly certification and edge cases.
- Custom design versus template. A hand-designed UI adds ₹30,000 to ₹1,50,000 over a well-chosen template. Worth it for inbound and luxury; not for a domestic budget agency.
- Languages. The first extra language adds 15 to 25 percent; each one after that is cheaper.
- Admin complexity. A B2B agent portal with net rates, credit limits and commission statements is a second product inside your website.
For a comparison with other kinds of sites, see how much a website costs in India in 2026.
Tourism website development: five types and what each needs
"Tourism website" covers very different businesses. Here is how I separate them when scoping.
1. Travel agency website
For agents who sell packages and customise itineraries over a call or WhatsApp. The website's job is to earn the inquiry, not to take the payment.
Must have: package pages with day-wise itineraries, inclusions and exclusions, inquiry forms that capture dates, travellers and budget, one-click WhatsApp with the package name pre-filled, destination guides for Google traffic, reviews with photos.
2. Tour operator platform
For operators who run their own departures and need to manage seats, guides and vehicles.
Must have: departure calendar with seat inventory, online booking with partial payment, group bookings, guide and vehicle assignment, pickup points, pre-trip documents and post-trip review requests.
3. OTA (online travel aggregator)
A marketplace selling other people's flights, hotels and activities.
Must have: flight and hotel search through a GDS or B2B API, price comparison, multi-vendor booking and settlement, wallet and refunds to wallet, reviews, loyalty points, a fraud check on card payments.
4. Destination or tourism board website
For state tourism departments and destination marketing bodies.
Must have: attraction and event listings with maps, itinerary suggestions by trip length, multi-language content, large media galleries served through a CDN, accessibility compliance (GIGW guidelines for Indian government sites), and a content workflow for a non-technical team.
5. Hotel, resort or homestay booking website
For single properties and small chains that want direct bookings instead of paying OTA commissions.
Must have: room-level availability, a booking engine that holds the room for a few minutes during payment, channel manager sync so OTA and direct inventory match, gallery, reviews, and a rate plan structure (refundable, non-refundable, breakfast included).
Travel agency website development: the features that bring bookings
This is the feature list I use for the first two rows of the cost table. Not everything applies to everyone; I have marked what to skip if budget is tight.
Package and itinerary pages
- Day-wise itinerary with hotel names, meals and transfers per day. Travellers compare this line by line against competitors.
- Inclusions and exclusions in two clear columns. Half the pre-sales calls we see are people asking what is not included.
- Price with the basis stated: per person on twin sharing, per couple, per group. Ambiguous pricing kills trust.
- Seasonal prices so the Diwali departure shows a different price from the monsoon one without staff editing pages.
- Photos and short videos per package, served as WebP through a CDN so pages load in under 2.5 seconds on a 4G phone.
Inquiry and booking
- Inquiry form per package with travel dates, number of travellers and budget. The form should email your team and open a WhatsApp conversation.
- WhatsApp click-to-chat with context. The message opens pre-filled with the package name and dates. We route these through PayPerWA when the client wants automated follow-ups.
- Online booking (optional at this tier). If you add it, add partial payment: a ₹5,000 advance converts far better than asking for ₹60,000 up front.
- Instant confirmation by email and WhatsApp, with the itinerary PDF attached.
Trust and content
- Reviews with the traveller's photo from the trip, not a stock image.
- Destination guides: things to do, best time to visit, how to reach. These rank for informational searches and feed people into package pages.
- Certifications: IATA, TAAI, IATO or state tourism registration numbers visible in the footer.
- Blog only if someone will write for it. An abandoned blog with three posts from 2023 hurts more than no blog.
Admin and operations
- Package editor with drag-and-drop day ordering.
- Inquiry inbox with status (new, quoted, booked, lost) so you can see your conversion rate.
- Simple CRM with the traveller's history; skip a full CRM until you have more than 50 inquiries a month.
- Invoice generator with GST and SAC codes.
Tour package website development: booking engine, payments, itinerary builder
This is the third row of the cost table and the one most often under-scoped. A tour package website is a travel agency website plus three systems that have to agree with each other.
The booking engine
The engine owns inventory. For each departure it tracks total seats, booked seats, held seats (a customer is mid-payment) and cancelled seats. The rules I insist on:
- A hold expires in 10 to 15 minutes and releases the seat automatically. Without this you oversell on a busy day.
- Partial payment with a due date. Advance now, balance 30 days before departure, with automated WhatsApp and email reminders.
- Cancellation policy as data, not a paragraph. Percent refunded by days before departure, so the system calculates the refund and nobody argues.
- Group bookings with one lead traveller paying and other travellers filling their own details later.
- Child and infant pricing as separate fare types.
Payments
Razorpay is our default for Indian clients: 2 percent per successful domestic transaction, zero setup fee and zero annual fee as of October 2026, and it covers UPI, cards, net banking, wallets and EMI. PayU and Cashfree are close alternatives, and Stripe is the option for inbound tours paid from abroad. I compared all four in Razorpay vs Stripe vs PayU vs Cashfree. Build in:
- Payment links for quotes closed over the phone, so the same system records them.
- Automatic refunds to the original payment method through the gateway's API.
- GST invoices generated at payment, with the correct SAC code for tour operator services.
- A webhook listener that marks the booking paid even if the customer closes the browser.
The itinerary builder
This is what separates a tour package portal from a booking site. The builder lets your team, or the customer, assemble a trip from components: destinations, nights per destination, hotel category, transfers, activities. Each component has a cost and a markup, so the quote re-prices live.
Three design decisions I would push you on:
- Start with an internal builder for your sales team, not a public one. Customers rarely finish a 12-step builder, but your staff will send a priced PDF in five minutes instead of an hour.
- Keep hotel and activity costs in a supplier rate table with validity dates, so seasonal re-pricing is a spreadsheet upload, not a developer ticket.
- Version the quote. When a customer asks for a cheaper hotel on day 3, keep version 1 and send version 2. You will need the history.
Agent (B2B) portal
If you sell through sub-agents, add a login with net rates, a credit limit, markup control and a monthly commission statement. This is roughly ₹1 to 2 lakh of additional work and pays for itself the first time it stops a dispute about commission.
Travel website developer stack: what we build with and why
| Component | What we use | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Frontend | Next.js (React), or WordPress for the agency tier | Fast, server-rendered pages that rank; WordPress keeps the first tier cheap |
| Backend | Node.js or Laravel | Both handle booking state, queues and webhooks well; we pick by the client's existing team |
| Database | PostgreSQL | Transactions for seat holds and payments |
| Search | PostgreSQL full-text first, Meilisearch or Elasticsearch once you pass about 500 packages | Do not pay for a search cluster you do not need |
| Payments | Razorpay, PayU, Cashfree, Stripe for international | Covered above |
| Hosting | VPS for agency sites; AWS or Google Cloud for OTA traffic | Match the bill to the traffic |
| Images | Cloudflare CDN, WebP, lazy loading | Travel sites are image heavy; this is where speed is won or lost |
| Maps | Google Maps or Mapbox | Itinerary maps, pickup points |
| Amazon SES or SendGrid | Confirmations and reminders | |
| SMS and WhatsApp | MSG91 for SMS; Meta Cloud API for WhatsApp | DLT-compliant SMS; WhatsApp confirmations get read |
The honest trade-off: WordPress gets a travel agency online for ₹20,000 to ₹50,000 and your team already knows how to use it, but once you need seat inventory and payment webhooks, a custom Next.js or Laravel build is cheaper to maintain than a pile of booking plugins.
Integrations: GDS, B2B flight APIs, channel managers, payments, WhatsApp
Flights and hotels you resell
- GDS (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport). Enterprise contracts, priced on request, and the cost runs into lakhs per year once you include certification and minimums. Right for an OTA with volume, wrong for a 10-person agency.
- Indian B2B aggregators (TBO, TripJack and similar). Agents get an API key against their agency account and pay per booking rather than a large upfront fee. Pricing is quoted on request and varies by volume, so get it in writing before you scope the build. For most Indian agencies this is the practical route to live flight and hotel search.
Hotel inventory you own
- Channel managers (eZee, STAAH, Djubo and others) sync your rooms between your website and MakeMyTrip, Goibibo, Booking.com and Agoda, so a room sold on one shows as sold everywhere. I cover the options and prices in the hotel channel manager guide.
Payments
- Razorpay for domestic (UPI, cards, net banking, EMI), Stripe for inbound customers paying in dollars or euros, and a currency display switch on the front end for international visitors.
Communication
- WhatsApp Business API through Meta's Cloud API for booking confirmations, payment reminders, pre-trip documents and post-trip review requests. Utility templates cost about ₹0.115 per message on Meta's India rate card, so a full booking lifecycle costs under ₹1 per customer.
- SMS for OTP and as a fallback when WhatsApp delivery fails.
- Email for the itinerary PDF and invoices.
Maps
- Google Maps or Mapbox for itinerary maps, hotel locations and pickup points. Budget for the API usage once you pass the free tier.
Web development for the travel industry: SEO that brings bookings
Travel is one of the most expensive niches for Google Ads, so organic search is where a travel website pays for itself. What works in 2026:
Pages to build
| Page type | Example search | Intent |
|---|---|---|
| Destination plus package | "Manali tour package", "Kerala honeymoon package" | Ready to buy |
| Destination guide | "things to do in Goa", "best time to visit Ladakh" | Researching |
| Comparison | "Shimla vs Manali in December" | Deciding |
| Budget | "Rajasthan trip under 20000" | Price-led |
| Activity | "scuba diving Andaman price" | Specific activity |
One page per destination and one per package, each with unique text. A hundred packages sharing one template paragraph will not rank.
Technical points that matter for travel sites
- Speed. Image-heavy pages need WebP, lazy loading and a CDN. Aim for Largest Contentful Paint under 2.5 seconds on mobile.
- Schema markup. TouristTrip, Offer and FAQ schema so your packages show price and dates in search results.
- Internal links from guides to packages and back. Guides earn the traffic; packages earn the money.
- Hindi or regional pages if your customers search in Hindi. These searches have far less competition.
Our SEO for small business guide covers the basics that apply to every site; the destination page structure above is what is specific to travel.
How to choose a travel website development company
I am a vendor, so read this with that in mind. These are the checks I would run on us too.
- Complete a test booking on a site they built. Not a screenshot or a video. Pick a package, pay ₹1 in test mode, cancel it, and see whether the refund and the emails behave. If they cannot show you one live travel site, they have not built one.
- Ask which integrations they have shipped, with client names. Razorpay is table stakes. A channel manager, a GDS or B2B flight API, and a WhatsApp template flow are the ones that separate a travel website development company from a general web agency.
- Get the scope in writing before the price. Number of pages, whether booking is included, which payment gateway, how many languages, who writes the content, who supplies photos. Two quotes on the same written scope are comparable; two quotes on a one-line brief are not.
- Ask who owns the code, the domain and the hosting account. You should, from day one. Walk away from anyone who keeps the domain in their name.
- Ask what happens after launch. A monthly maintenance price, a response time for bugs, and how a price change on 40 packages gets done (your admin panel, or a developer ticket).
- Check the reviews, then call one. Our 4.9-star Google rating is from 76 reviews. Ask any vendor you shortlist, including us, for a client you can call.
- Be suspicious of a ₹15,000 quote for a booking engine. It is a template with a contact form relabelled as "booking". That is fine if that is what you need, but it should be priced and described as such.
Our own travel website development work sits under website development services, with fixed prices for the agency tier on the travel agency page and the hotel side on the hospitality industry page.
Seven mistakes I keep seeing in travel website development
- Unoptimised images. A 4 MB hero photo on a 4G connection loses the visitor before the price loads. WebP and a CDN fix this for almost nothing.
- A booking flow with eight steps. Every extra step loses a share of buyers. Collect the lead traveller's details, take the advance, and get the rest later.
- No partial payment. Asking for ₹80,000 up front on a first visit does not work. Take an advance.
- No trust signals. Reviews with real photos, IATA or TAAI membership, and a GST number in the footer. Travel is a high-value purchase from a stranger.
- Prices that never change. Seasonal pricing has to live in the admin panel, or your Diwali departures will be under-priced for three years.
- No follow-up system. Most inquiries do not book on the first contact. Route inquiries into a CRM or at least a WhatsApp follow-up sequence.
- Building the app first. The website brings the Google traffic; the app serves repeat customers. Build them in that order.
Talk to us about your travel website
We are Codingclave, a Lucknow development company founded in 2017, with 200+ projects delivered and a Top Rated badge on Upwork. If you send me your package list and a link to your current site, I will reply with a scope and a fixed quote from the table above.
- Get a free quote with your requirements
- Website development services
- Travel agency website, fixed price
- Hospitality software and websites
- See our work
- Call or WhatsApp: +91 92771 84741
Frequently asked questions
In 2026 a travel agency website with package pages, itineraries and inquiry forms costs ₹20,000 to ₹1,50,000. Add online booking, Razorpay payments and a customer login and the range is ₹2 to 5 lakh. A tour package portal with a drag-and-drop itinerary builder, seasonal pricing and a B2B agent login runs ₹3 to 8 lakh. An OTA-style platform with flight and hotel APIs, multi-vendor payouts and a wallet is ₹8 to 20 lakh. These are our own Codingclave quotes for Indian clients; third-party API fees (GDS, hotel aggregators, SMS, hosting) sit on top and I list them separately in the cost table on this page.
A travel agency website with packages and inquiry forms takes 2 to 5 weeks. A booking-enabled site with payments and a customer portal takes 8 to 12 weeks, most of it on the booking flow, refund rules and payment testing. A tour package portal with an itinerary builder takes 10 to 16 weeks. An OTA platform with GDS or B2B flight APIs, hotel aggregators and multi-vendor settlement takes 16 to 24 weeks, and the API certification with the supplier is usually the slowest step, not the code.
A tour package website needs four things working together: a package catalogue with day-wise itineraries, inclusions, exclusions and photos; a booking engine that checks departure dates and seats in real time; payments through Razorpay, PayU or Cashfree with partial payment and EMI options; and an itinerary builder so your team, or the customer, can swap hotels, add activities and get a re-priced quote without a phone call. On top of that you want seasonal pricing, group booking, GST invoices and WhatsApp confirmations. I break each one down in the tour package section of this guide.
Yes, but understand what the integration is. MakeMyTrip and Goibibo do not sell a public API to list your packages. What you can do is connect your hotel or homestay inventory to them through a channel manager (eZee, STAAH, Djubo or similar), so availability and rates stay in sync and you avoid double bookings. For flights and hotels you resell, you connect to a GDS (Amadeus, Sabre, Travelport) or an Indian B2B aggregator such as TBO or TripJack. We scope both kinds of integration, and I cover channel managers in a separate guide linked on this page.
Not at the start. A mobile-first responsive website gives you Google traffic, destination pages and bookings on every phone without an app store listing. Build a native app only when you have repeat customers who benefit from push notifications, saved traveller profiles and offline itineraries, which usually means an OTA or a large tour operator. An Android plus iOS app adds ₹3 to 10 lakh and 10 to 16 weeks. For most agencies, WhatsApp automation for booking updates gives you most of the app's value at a fraction of the cost.
Yes. Every travel website we build ships with an admin panel where your team adds and edits packages, uploads photos, changes prices for a season, blocks dates, publishes destination guides and blog posts, and reads inquiries, all without a developer. For WordPress builds this is the WordPress dashboard with a custom package post type. For Next.js and Laravel builds it is a custom admin we design around your workflow, with role-based access so a junior staff member can update photos but not change prices.
It depends on who you sell to. If you sell domestic holidays to Hindi-speaking families, a Hindi version of your package pages lifts conversions and ranks for Hindi searches that English pages miss. If you sell inbound India tours, English is the base and German, French, Spanish or Japanese pages pay off because those travellers search in their own language. Multi-language adds about 15 to 25 percent to the build cost for the first extra language (translation, URL structure, hreflang tags) and less for each one after that. Tourism boards almost always need it; a small domestic agency usually does not.
Ask for three things before you look at the price. First, a live travel site they built where you can complete a test booking end to end, including a refund. Second, a written list of which integrations they have done before (Razorpay, a channel manager, a GDS or B2B flight API) with the client's name. Third, who owns the code and the hosting account when the project ends. Then compare quotes on the same written scope, not on a one-line brief. A company that charges ₹50,000 and one that charges ₹5 lakh are usually quoting different scopes, not different quality.