Bringing an innovative startup app to market – Travel App

Connecting travelers to a multitude of options.

Graphic showing gears symbolizing the integration of blockchain, machine learning, and technology.

Tech Details

React
React Native
Java
MySQL
Node.js
Microservices

Scope

Project's Goal

A concierge for travelers – this was our client’s idea who reached out to us when looking for a team that would help realize it. The plan was to create an all-in-one app that would allow plane and hotel booking, connecting with other travelers, and ensuring a perfect on-site experience through guide services and other local activitiesavailable for booking.

The Challenge

The idea was to make users feel that everything is taken care of, and they can simply sit back and enjoy their voyage. Our team transformed this idea into a well-designed, functional product.

The tool supports the tourists and the local guides and hoteliers who can offer their services in the application. Travel App provides them with a complex tool containing such features as bookings management, trip schedules, and many others that facilitate running the tourism-related business.

The process

Navigating the project landscape

Conducting the scoping session

As always, we started the process in front of a whiteboard. We held a discovery workshop with our client to gather their ideas and requirements. After three days of workshops, we understood their business goals and gathered a long list of requirements – and a big stack of post-it notes.

Mapping down the processes

Next, we mapped the processes that would happen inside the app. The customer had to point out the booking system we could use. For that purpose, we conducted the research based on which two providers were picked.Subsequently, we determined the interfaces to design to stay independent of the specifics of different booking systems in case we need to implement changes in the further development stage. Here, we specified that the once generic “plane booking” would consist of a search, with the option to pick a one-way or return trip, filter, and sort the results. Next, there was the flight details view and redirection to an external site.

Creating low-fi wireframes

Our designers set out to create a low-fidelity showcase to get the first look at the features. We gathered essential feedback from the client and tweaked the output. At the same time, our designers composed the style guide for the app.

Product Realization

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System architecture

When the design was in progress, our IT Architect broke down the application architecture and determined the optimal tech stack. Working in the Scrum methodology, we defined the key personas and user stories. Our team implemented a multi-service, multi-platform ecosystem containing two mobile apps, three web apps, and multiple integrations. Based on cloud infrastructure, 4soft has also implemented multiple third-party services such as flight ticket issuing, payment gateways, etc.

Development phase

Having accepted low-fi wireframes and a detailed style guide, the client gave our team the green light to start development. The development team methodically built and presented the client with the prepared features. After going through the testing phase and some fixes, each feature would get marked as done. Repeating the process back and forth for different features finally resulted in a ready product that allows users to plan their next trip from beginning to end in a single place.
We ran the User Acceptance Testing process to eliminate any issues and ensure that the product was exactly what it was supposed to be.

Application users

We had three types of users in the application:
– Traveler
– Guide
– Service Provider
The Traveler was a regular registered user role in the app who could book hotels, flights, tours, and tourist attractions via the application.The Guide is a type of user that could add tours. They had their own board where they could add something akin to social media posts with photos and descriptions.The Service provider is s type of user that could add hotels and activities to the application. Both had to be verified by the application administrator.

App functionalities

Hotel list

The application is integrated with the Amadeus API, which provides a list of hotels with the possibility of booking them. The list of hotels shown in the Traveler services application included both hotels with the Amadeus API and hotels added by service providers.

Flight list

The list of flights was fully from the external API; Travel App showed a list of flights with transfers and departure and arrival times in line with filtered dates and airports.

List of tours & activities

A list consisting of tours added by users with the role of Guide and a list of attractions added by Service Providers.

Integration with ATOM

ATOM is a platform that allows for financial transactions. The application allowed customers to purchase subscriptions for service providers and guides and pay for hotels, activities, and trips added by Guides and Service Providers.

Chat

The application had a chat written from scratch, which allowed both chatting with one person and creating groups with the option to add or remove users from the application.

Notifications

Many different types of email notifications and push notifications in the mobile app, e.g., about an upcoming subscription expiry date, a booked hotel, or a new message in the chat. All notifications could be turned off in the account settings. It was possible to disable specific notification types, not all of them.

Adding hotels, activities, tours

An extensive wizard where you could set time intervals with cyclical repetitions, detailed descriptions, adding many photos, providing the location that was then displayed on google maps.

Integration with Google Maps

To allow displaying the location of hotels, tours, and activities.

Forum

A basic form of a forum with categories and subcategories where users could add posts and comments.

The results

What we achieved

The project has been handed over to the customer and is now awaiting its official launch in Google Play and App Store.While working with a client in the early stages of the company development, we pay extra care to provide specialists that share the passion for building products from the ground up and thrive in a fast-paced environment.

Besides travel, we supported budding startups in fintech, cryptocurrencies, e-commerce, and healthcareindustries. Our clients raised up to $15 million per funding round after working on their MVP with us.