Case study

    Travel companion app to enhance clients’ journeys

    Industry: Travel
    Location: Luxembourg
    Technologies: Swift, Objective-C, CocoaPod, Fastlane, Firebase, Facebook SD, Lottie, AFNetworking, Mantle, ASSA, OCMock, XCTest, SwiftLint, Kotlin, Java, Retrofit 2, SQLite (Room), Glide, Kotlin Coroutines and Flows, Espresso

    3,2M

    mobile downloads of the apps

    210k

    average active users per month in 2019

    29k

    average mobile check-in per month in 2019

    50%

    cost savings on data streaming workflow creation with Apache Airflow

    The background

    Our client is a leading European travel company, selling around 1.6 million trips annually. As a member of one of the most prominent leisure travel groups in the world, our customer is supported by 21,000 employees and serves over 22 million customers annually. The company includes five large tour operators in different countries, a hotel company owning three hotel chains, and their own airlines.

    The challenge

    The client operates passenger airlines, package holidays, cruise lines, hotels, and resorts. By the time our cooperation started, our customer had already been using a travel campaign app that provided useful information for people who’ve booked a trip. They wanted to develop new features for the app to improve the customer experience at each step of the journey:

    • Get ready for the trip (information & facts about hotels, offline maps, contact information, excursions, and more about the destination)

    • Collect insights and get support in real-time during the trip (check-in on flights and hotels, book extras, open hotel rooms via Bluetooth, send instant feedback)

    • Provide feedback about journeys and find inspiration for new travel adventures (book future trips, get personalized promotional offers, learn more about interesting destinations).

    Strategic partnership

    For over four years we has already been acted as the client’s strategic partner for software development and quality assurance, covering diverse areas including e-commerce, ERP, API systems, and more. That is why the client decided to extend Nortal's scope to add mobile travel business solutions and build its own dedicated mobile team.

    The team consisted of a technical lead/Scrum Master, three iOS developers, five Android developers, and three QA/automation engineers. The team was working together with the client’s on-site teams to develop five travel companion native iOS and Android apps with language and content localization for five countries. 

    The Nortal was responsible for:

    • technical design and implementation of the enhancements
    • manual and automation testing on different stages
    • requirements analysis and composing requirements for new features
    • close collaboration with the UX team to provide platform-specific amendments
    • close collaboration with the back-end teams
    • running the demo session and publishing the apps to stores

    The team was working according to the Scrum and Kanban methodologies. Quality assurance was organized and conducted by an ISTQB certified QA on the basis of the ISO 9001:2015 QA standard.

    The results

    • Trips booking in 2019 increased from 5% to 19% compared to the web platform

    • Extras booking in 2019 increased from 12% to 31% compared to the web platform

    • 4.5 average apps rating over all markets and platforms.

    With the help of Nortal, our client has successfully introduced new features in mobile apps, providing better support for holidaymakers. The core modules that improved the travel experience most were: 

    • Easy and convenient online сheck-in.
      Users can check in online starting 24 hours before the departure time, which allows them to get boarding passes in advance.
    • Hospitality mobile access.
      With the new mobile access solution, users no longer have to line up to check in at the front desk of a hotel when they arrive. Guests’ smartphones become their room keys, allowing instant access. The app also provides property maps to make sure users find their rooms quickly.
    • Customer service and customer satisfaction.
      Users feel more secure when they know they can contact the travel provider instantly from a mobile app. This approach also allows the client’s business to consistently improve its processes, including the transfer process, client communication and engagement processes, and how the company brings holidays to life.

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    Nortal is a strategic innovation and technology company with an unparalleled track-record of delivering successful transformation projects over 20 years.