Building a platform for complex travel booking and scheduling
- Client
A Workforce and Government Travel Provider (name withheld for confidentiality)
- Services
Product Management, UX, UI, & Product Design, Web development, Design systems, Node.js, React, JavaScript/TypeScript, PostgreSQL
- Description
thoughtbot helped the client modernize complex, manual hotel bookings with a scalable, user-friendly app.
In the first year, the travel platform processed over 7,000 reservations across 8,500 guests and 800 hotels.
Outgrowing workflows in a high-volume, high-stakes, regulated environment
The booking team at a travel provider serving workforce and government clients (who has requested anonymity) managed thousands of hotel reservations through a patchwork of spreadsheets, SharePoint documents, and email. This approach was time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult to scale. Their clients were also asking for a more modern experience: the ability to view and manage bookings online, track team members on the road, and keep costs within specific rate thresholds.
We realized that there was a lot of inefficiency going along with building our own tools or relying on do-it-yourself systems. We needed something that was really specific to our company.
From launch to 200 hotel clients on a scalable travel booking platform
The team launched a custom travel booking and scheduling platform designed to support high-volume, complex operations. Built for workforce and government-serving clients, the platform replaced manual coordination with a centralized system for managing reservations, tracking teams, and enforcing cost controls.
Within the first year, the platform scaled rapidly—supporting hundreds of hotel clients and thousands of bookings—while giving both internal teams and customers real-time visibility into travel and scheduling.
If someone said, 'I need to build a really unique piece of software. Nothing off the shelf works for me,' I'd tell them: check out thoughtbot. I guarantee they can get you off the ground.