Tourist Traffic Management Application

Client

Mr. Shuttle, a tour operator in the tourism industry, specializes in professional transport services for tourists and business travelers, offering airport transfers, intercity transfers, as well as day trips.

Challenge

The tour company, employing dozens of staff and serving thousands of clients annually, decided to create a new system to support their business processes. The scope of needs included managing reservations from external systems, distributing tasks necessary for service delivery, and settling with employees and subcontractors. Employees previously performed part of the work manually, which was time-consuming and prone to errors.

The existing team workflow relied on several external programs and an outdated dedicated solution burdened with significant technical debt, making it difficult to efficiently add new functionalities. The previous challenges included:

The client decided to create a new dedicated system utilizing current technology capabilities. Requirements included the ability to work online from anywhere in the world, scalability regarding the number of users, and ease of future development. The application should also allow integration with third-party applications via an API interface.

One of the most important challenges was conducting a safe migration of data from the old system to the new one and ensuring a transitional period where both applications would function simultaneously, synchronizing data between them.

An additional element of the project was the iterative development of the application's UX/UI area, based on materials provided by the client in the form of documentation and preliminary mock-ups. The iterative approach allowed for the gradual adaptation of the system to newly identified user needs and technological capabilities.

Solution

The solution was based on a client-server architecture. The client application was written in React, and the server application in Kotlin using Spring Boot. The backend application was integrated with the PostgreSQL database. The solution was based on a hexagonal architecture, which allowed for a consistent separation of the business layer from implementation details.

Communication between the client and server used REST API. A clear division into backend and frontend parts enabled teams to work independently and allowed the possibility of replacing one part of the system without interfering with the other or adding another component in the future, e.g., a mobile application.

The application was designed with easy future development in mind, thanks to the use of modular object-oriented architecture, dependency injection, and unit tests.

Thanks to the well-thought-out database structure, cyclic migrators, and collaboration with the development team maintaining the company's old solution, it was possible to conduct a safe transition from the old system to the new one without stopping any of the client's business processes.

The application was deployed on the AWS platform, ensuring scalability and reliability. Client data was secured using the HTTPS protocol. By implementing the CI/CD system, the process of deploying new versions of the system was automated, significantly accelerating development iterations. Deployment on AWS, combined with the advantages of web applications, enabled easy access to the system from anywhere in the world.

The application implemented integrations with, among others:

• GYG (Get Your Guide) - a platform offering tourist trips
• Viator - a platform offering tourist trips
• Booking - a leading platform offering accommodation reservations
• Comarch Optima - an accounting and CRM system
• NBP Web API - a service providing historical exchange rates

Various user categories (employees, dispatchers, clients, sellers) have customized access to application functionalities, allowing effective access management to data. Specific user groups have access to dedicated functionalities, such as a mobile view for drivers or a dispatcher view.