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  1. Onix
  2. Case Studies
  3. TravelBid
Travelbid logo

Travel booking platform
development case study

Sharing Onix’s experience in building a travel booking system


TravelBid is a platform where travelers can book a hotel room or holiday home, order an airport transfer, or rent a car in Cyprus. Instead of using traditional booking engines like Booking.com or Expedia, they can enter their trip details on TravelBid and within minutes get direct offers from over 14K local businesses.

Industry
Travel and Booking
Team size
8 Specialists
Location
Cyprus

The problems 
TravelBid solves

Service providers like hotels or car rental agencies sell highly perishable products and can’t afford to be idle: a hotel room night can’t be sold tomorrow. A 50% discount is better than no sale at all, but businesses are reluctant to publicize prices below their average pricing level.

Ralph Schonfelder, the client, decided to create a travel booking system for business owners to offer special deals when the demand is low without publishing prices below market average on popular booking engines.

For price-sensitive travelers, the platform offers opportunities to book special local deals they would find nowhere else. Without searching, emailing, and calling dozens of service providers, they can receive an offer tailored specifically to their needs.

How the 
platform works

The system distinguishes two categories of users:

Customers – travelers
Vendors – travel and hospitality service providers

Customers can post inquiries for booking accommodation, airport transfer, or rental car. 
For example:

  • 01

    A customer looking for an airport transfer on October 10th places a request on the website.

  • 02

    The customer views the offers from local taxi and transfer companies and selects the most suitable one.

  • 03

    They can communicate with a vendor using the in-app chat.

  • 04

    The customer books the chosen service on the platform and pays with a credit card or via PayPal.

  • 05

    The customer receives an invoice.

Customer role

In the same case, a transport service uses
the vendors’ interface
 of the platform:

  • 01

    To view a request for their service on October 10th

  • 02

    To submit a quote for the trip

  • 03

    To chat with the customer

  • 04

    To receive a confirmation of the booking

  • 05

    To receive the payment

Service role

Do you wish to develop a travel booking system for your business or others? Reliable software developers are just one click away!

Beginning of the 
travel booking portal development

The client provided Onix with the software requirement specification (SRS) document. The creation of the UX/UI design began with carefully studying the client’s requirements and references.

Immediately after that, the designers analyzed the major players in the market, such as Airbnb, Booking.com, trivago, and others. Their task was to make the future app’s user flow as straightforward and convenient as possible.

This information helped the designer create
the user flow, wireframes, and then a clickable prototype
 of the website.

The designer came up with several smart solutions that make the interface 
user-friendlier:

Post your trip

She divided the inquiry form into several steps to facilitate a quick and easy understanding and filling out.

My inquiries

The page ‘My inquiries‘ displays the inquiries as cards with essential information and the number of offers for each, so the user instantly understands how many options they have.

Offer details

Displaying the traveler’s requirements on the offers page along with detailed information on each offer helps users quickly compare what they need with what each provider offers.

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Design process

Simultaneously, the designer assembled a mood board with examples of different styles.

After the client approved the screens, the designer started working on the UI design. The homepage took several iterations made by two designers before the client liked one of the suggested concepts.

Thus we settled on a clean light design with key elements highlighted with bright colors.

  • 01

    Three types of gradient were designed to help users quickly understand that the site offers three types of services: lodgings booking, car rentals, and transfers.

  • 02

    The main gradient includes orange hues associated with the sun, beach cocktails, and fruit, and thus vacations and fun.

  • 03

    Photos of happy travelers were added to reinforce the message.

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The chosen style was applied 
to the other pages.

Logo Design 
for the platform

After minor changes, the client finally approved the UI design of the travel booking app and requested a logo for the platform. At first, he wanted a generic sign suitable for a travel business. However, we convinced the client that the new service deserved a unique logo to make it recognizable.

The designer created many concepts of the logo, playing around with the idea of flights, planes, and birds, and presented each on the home page layout and with different backgrounds before the client accepted the sign that pleased him, suited the business, and fit in with the style of the platform. It’s basically a combination of a stylized plane and the initial “t” from TravelBid.

Finally, the designer adapted the web interface for mobile browsers.

The designer used Figma to develop the wireframes, visual design, prototype, and logo and color palette for the platform.

Communication with the client was facilitated with a project management service like Trello. The client created a project, created various tasks, and wrote all his requirements and corrections there.

After the client approved the final design, the team proceeded with programming the travel booking platform.

OnixOnix
OnixOnix
OnixOnix

The travel booking platform development process

After the design stage, Onix proceeded to build the travel booking system.

The development team included 4 specialists:

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    front-end developer

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    back-end developer

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    quality assurance (QA) engineers

  • check mark

    project manager/SCRUM master

The development process comprised 3 steps:

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    feature coding

  • check mark

    pre-production release and testing

  • check mark

    production release

The chosen SCRUM project management implied

  • check mark

    dividing the product into features/user stories and prioritizing them

  • check mark

    feature delivery in short release cycles (sprints) of 1-2 weeks

  • check mark

    short daily meetings to discuss tasks and solve issues

  • check mark

    sprint reviews to evaluate each delivered feature, get feedback, and plan improvements

The tools used by the team included

  • check mark

    GitLab

  • check mark

    JetBrains IDE

  • check mark

    Jira

  • check mark

    Postman

  • check mark

    Slack

  • check mark

    TestRail

The development was completed in 3.5 months.
Thanks to a clear list of product requirements and Agile project management, the team delivered the planned features in a timely manner, with few change requests from the client.

Travel booking portal development technology stack

  • Onix's developers programmed the platform's front-end and back-end applications using Vue.js and Node.js, respectively.

  • They had to use some JavaScript libraries and integrate them into Vue.js to build a mobile-friendly front-end.

  • The server infrastructure was set up on the client's AWS account.

  • socket.io was used for real-time messaging. In case an extraordinary number of messages are sent simultaneously, a queue is formed if the server doesn't process other requests.

  • Stripe and PayPal were integrated to support online payments.

Onix
Onix

Result and prospects

TravelBid was launched in June 2022.
Soon, the platform counted 14K+ service providers and was adding up to 5K new users monthly.

Do you need to develop a custom travel booking platform? Reliable software developers are just one click away!