Building a Smart CRM for a Travel Agency

A custom CRM that helped a travel agency manage tours, revenue, and teams in one system

CRM travel implementation case study: How Onix built an internal travel management system to streamline custom tour management, cut manual work, and boost business visibility — all within a tight budget.

Travel
Industry
4 specialists
Team size
Netherlands
Location
8 months
Project duration

[ Business context ]

Our client is a travel agency from the Netherlands that specializes in custom-made, author-led tours.

Every trip is built around a specific request, with its own route, suppliers, pricing, and logistics.

They already had a customer-facing website where travelers could request and book trips. But inside the company, things were a different story. Their internal tool was outdated, limited, and increasingly unreliable.

It couldn’t support their growing workflows, didn’t reflect how the team actually worked, and made reporting and calculations harder than they needed to be. As the business grew, so did the friction.

The client came to Onix looking for a new internal custom travel CRM that could organize all processes, from the very first travel request to invoices, vouchers, and business analytics.

[ Product scope ]

The Onix team needed to:

Replace a legacy system with a modern, reliable CRM

Cover the full business flow without disrupting the existing client website

Design a clean, intuitive UI for daily internal use

Fit the entire project into a clearly limited budget

Deliver faster without compromising quality.

Ready to design and build a custom CRM system tailored to how your travel business works?

[ Solutions we provide ]

The client had a strict budget, so we planned for efficiency from the start.

We intentionally built the custom CRM system for travel agency around an AI-assisted development approach, using tools such as Copilot, Junie, Codex, and Claude Code, with human oversight at all times.

AI helped us speed up repetitive, template-based tasks in the custom-built travel CRM, allowing the team to focus on logic, architecture, and UX.

As a result, we reduced development time by about 50%, stayed within budget, and still delivered a robust, production-ready custom CRM for travel agency.

End-to-end request-to-booking flow

Our team built a fully structured workflow to cover every step from travel requests to bookings, payments, and reporting. We designed it so that each request is automatically tracked, assigned, and processed without gaps, ensuring seamless internal operations.

Requests management

We built a system that pulls requests from the client’s website directly into the CRM. Our experts included automatic assignment to team members, ensuring that no request is lost and each task has a clear owner.

Offers with smart calculations

The Onix team developed a module that allows managers to create offers from scratch or templates. We integrated automatic pricing and margin calculations so offers can instantly convert into bookings, reducing manual errors and speeding up the workflow.

Bookings & margin tracking

Our team built detailed booking pages with item-by-item cost breakdowns. The system calculates how much goes to suppliers, how much the client pays, and, most importantly, the real margin for each trip.

Clients database

We created a centralized list of all clients to store all trip history and personal information. This database is easily searchable and linked directly to requests, offers, and bookings for maximum efficiency.

Item-based trip structure

We designed trips as collections of items — flights, hotels, tours, rentals. This allows multiple team members to manage bookings simultaneously, keeping workflows smooth and organized.

Vouchers generation

Our experts built a system to generate PDF vouchers for each travel item. That vouchers should be ready to send directly to clients, simplifying communication and ensuring travelers always have the correct documents.

Payments & invoicing

We developed a payment and invoicing module that tracks client payments and updates trip status. Invoices are available in English, German, or Dutch, depending on the booking source.

Suppliers management

Our developers built a supplier management system to organize all service providers and tour operators. We decided to centralize this information to speed up and improve the reliability of supplier coordination.

Offer templates

We created reusable offer templates. Such templates allow managers to respond to new requests quickly, maintain consistency, and reduce repetitive work.

Admin & role management

We built a flexible roles-and-settings module. The agency can customize access, manage currencies, insurance types, and rental categories, enabling the system to adapt to their internal processes.

Business analytics & results dashboards

Onix developed dashboards showing revenue, margins, conversions, and team performance. Our experts highlighted both company-wide and individual results, giving management actionable insights at a glance.

Clean, intuitive UI for daily internal use

We designed a clear, user-friendly interface tailored for everyday work. Our team focused on logical navigation, readable data structures, and minimal friction so that employees can manage requests, bookings, and reports quickly, even during busy operational days.

Core technology stack we used

Backend & API

PHP (Laravel),

Sanctum,

Reverb,

Scout,

Swagger,

GraphQL

Frontend development

Vue.js,

CraftCMS

Data & Infrastructure

PostgreSQL,

Redis,

Docker

Document & File Processing

DOMPDF,

PHPOffice Word,

PHPOffice Spreadsheet

Quality, Testing & Monitoring

PHPUnit,

PHPStan,

Pint,

Horizon,

Sentry

[ Results ]

The travel agency now runs its entire internal operation in one system.

Daily work is faster and more structured. Managers see exactly where each request stands. Finance has precise numbers. Leadership gets real-time insights into revenue, margins, and team performance.

What started as a replacement for an old tool turned into a scalable internal platform that supports growth, transparency, and smarter decision-making. And it did all that without blowing the budget.