Modern Reservation System for Cruise Lines

The Customer

A globally recognized travel and tourism brand

The Project

Modern Reservation System For Cruise Lines

Overview

Our client is a globally recognized travel and tourism brand. They were utilizing a Commercial off the Shelf (COTS) solution to manage their business operations. This same COTS solution served as the backend for many of their customer-facing applications. While a COTS solution allowed them to get to market quickly with a robust feature set, over time they found it very restricting. It had been challenging for them to differentiate themselves in the market. The system’s lack of flexibility made it difficult to meet dynamic business needs, implement new requirements, or roll out new features. This, of course, impacted the company’s strategic vision and ultimately, the bottom line.

As a result of our client’s business domain and unique operating environments, they needed a modernized application that was highly responsive, resilient, performant, and scalable. The solution needed to be able to operate even when out to sea when internet connectivity is limited or simply unavailable. All the activity that happened in the systems while connectivity is limited or unavailable needed to be synchronized with central systems when the ship regained connectivity (typically while at port). As an additional requirement, this application needed to be extensible and maintainable to meet ongoing business needs.

The Challenge

• Eliminate dependence on industry-standard COTS booking engine.

• Improve delivery of booking system capabilities from months to days and feature delivery that meets company and customer requirements.

• Make each ship (a floating data center) resilient in the face of limited bandwidth and connectivity to shore-based systems

The Solution

Our client determined that it needed to modernize its reservations and backend business platforms using Domain Driven Design and Reactive Architecture principles. This involved implementing a reactive microservices architecture and rewriting the code base tailored to each business domain. The goal was to shift the responsibility of managing the data from IT to business analysts and enable modern UIs. This modernization has resulted in a service-oriented platform that embraces CI/CD best practices for efficient operations and innovation. Reactive Architecture ensures the system is highly responsive, resilient, scalable, and cloud-native. The outcome is an enhanced guest experience that enables our client to focus on delivering a high-quality customer experience that generates new revenue

Results

The combination of Domain Driven Design (DDD) and Reactive Architecture for the development of our client’s new booking system will have a profound impact on user experiences and operations. The implementation of leading-edge technologies has led to a flexible and scalable system that can be adapted to meet the evolving needs of the business. One significant advantage of the new system is that changes can be made in one part of the system without affecting other areas. This enables the development team to make updates and improvements more efficiently, without causing unintended consequences elsewhere in the system.

The implementation of Reactive Architecture has significantly reduced the risk of backend service outages cascading to the rest of the system. If one part of the system experiences a problem, it does not affect the entire system, resulting in improved stability and reliability. The new booking system also allows for new features and bug fixes to be rolled out with ease. As a result, guests can enjoy a seamless experience when interacting with the platform.

The new system empowers guests to manage their own cruise experience. With the new features, they can make changes to their bookings, manage their itineraries, and receive real-time updates, all through the platform. This results in a more convenient and personalized experience for the guests, leading to greater satisfaction and loyalty.