Mobile Apps For Quick & Easy Travel Bookings

The Background

The client is a group of corporate startups that belong to one of the largest travel groups in the MENA region. The group managed to generate $1 billion of sales within three years. The client is transforming from an online travel agency to a fully-fledged omni-channel travel services provider. They offer a seamless user experience for travel booking across state-of-the-art online platforms, call centers and retail locations, providing:

• hotel booking options for over 1.5 million properties globally

• flight bookings on over 450 airlines and complete holiday packages

• 24/7 customer service centers and in-branch travel advisors.

The Challenge

The client was already offering iOS and Android mobile applications to travelers who were planning their family holidays, business trips or getaways with friends. The apps offered a personalized experience that guided users through the booking process and secure and transparent payment options. But there’s always room for improvement, so the client decided to enhance the existing applications to allow users to get through the flight and hotel booking processes within one minute. The larger goal was to build a scalable, maintainable and reusable travel solution.

Strategic Partnership

pwrteams was chosen through a multi-tier tender process. The client paid careful attention to the previous experience and successful mobile projects we delivered for the Travel industry. The ability to start working just a few days after signing the contract was also critical. For each new team member, the client organized:

• personal meetings with a team of developers and managers to share experience and introduce the development process

• technical interviews that involved solving algorithmic tasks

• interviews with the product owners

• 2-3 day-long coding tasks.

On average, it took 1-2 weeks to fully interview one candidate. pwrteams team did everything, from setting up the applications’ fundamental structure to publishing thoroughly tested and integrated apps to marketplaces. Our tasks also involved:

• splitting the functionality into logical blocks

• supporting existing features

• building new features

• migrating to new APIs

• redesigning the apps

• improving performance

• collaborating with the product team and different development sub-teams

• support during peak loads.

The pwrteams team consisted of:

• 2 iOS developers

• 2 Android developers

• Test automation engineer

• QA engineer

The team was following the Scrum methodology.

The Results

Together with the client’s team, pwrteams improved the existing apps and enhanced tools for planning and booking trips. Thanks to the work we’ve done, the iOS and Android app users could:

browse and filter over 1.5 million hotels and thousands of flights at the best prices

access a personal account management system and track bookings

access exclusive deals thanks to various loyalty programs

enjoy instant and secure payment methods: full payment, partial payment, the “Pay Later” function and via the bonus program

easily book flight tickets and avoid paying high prices with Fare Calendar

address 24/7 customer support in the English and Arabian languages

The client’s long-term plan is to build features to inspire users after trips and help plan new ones.