Project Scope
The project under consideration was developed for a leading European flag carrier airline. Its fleet size and number of international flights and destinations is one of the highest in the world. The project team organized by GP Solutions developed a specific cross-selling module, which was integrated into the existing flight online booking engine. The main purpose of this module was to allow travelers to choose extra travel services (hotel, car hire, insurance, etc.) while booking flights online. All the travel commodities shown by the system to the end user were generated in line with the business settings applied by the airline.
Challenges
- New travel consolidators were to be applied to provide more options for online booking and reservation.
- The customer’s web-site required significant refactoring of the existing payment processing functionality. More to that, it was necessary to connect additional payment modules and ultimately expand the range of available payment solutions.
- GP Solutions team was requested to produce complex logic to generate dynamic travel product packages. The reason behind this functionality lies in optimization of the current booking process – it needed to be more intuitive and quick for the end user.
- Throughout the project lifetime, GP Solutions team had to merge efforts with another 3-rd party supplier responsible for other parts of the platform. It was critically important to coordinate activities of both teams to achieve the ultimate goal of the project.
Solutions
- A dedicated development team was formed to run the project. Initially it consisted of 2 specialists and later upon request of the customer GP managed to expand the team to 16 project members.
- A dynamic packaging module was developed from scratch and later implemented separately from the basic flight booking engine developed by GP Solutions.
- GP team produced a state-of-the-art packaged tours calendar with option to preview flights up to 3 days before and after the selected travel dates.
- Special connectors to Pegasus Solutions and American Express services were implemented. Also, the project team updated existing connectors to the travel consolidators Travco, Hotelbeds, Avis and Viator.
Results
- Loyal customer base increased by 40%, the overall sales volume rose up to 25% as compared to previous periods.
- Complex and elaborate dynamic travel packaging logic produced by GP team helped to optimize the overall patterns of user booking behavior and increase productivity of the customer.
- Payment processing mechanisms based on services provided by American Express (so called “one-time-use credit card”) were significantly improved. At this point, all payments from users reach the suppliers instantly, enabling the latter to offer better pricing.
- The online portal in question became more functional, dynamic and user-friendly. It was honored with the prestigious Travolution award in “Best Airline Website” nomination.
Technology:
XML/XSLT, JSP, JS, HTML, Java
Project Duration:
14 months
Scope:
882 man-days