A dedicated booking app for a single salon faces a real adoption challenge: clients are reluctant to download an app for every business they visit occasionally, which means a salon-specific app usually only makes sense for a business with a large, loyal, repeat client base already.
For salons at that scale, the app's core value is convenience that a booking website can't quite match — push notifications for appointment reminders, one-tap rebooking of a favorite stylist and service, and loyalty point tracking, all without a login each time.
For salons not yet at that scale, a strong mobile-optimized booking website usually delivers most of the same convenience without asking clients to install anything — the booking flow, reminders (via SMS instead of push), and rebooking can all work through a browser.
The honest sequencing for most salons: prove out demand and booking volume through a mobile web experience first, and only invest in a dedicated app once there's a client base loyal and large enough to justify the download — chasing the app before the demand exists usually means an app nobody opens twice.