Overview
Executive summary
The agency served high-net-worth travelers with white-glove itineraries across Europe, the Middle East, and Asia. Client context lived in email threads, shared drives, and ad-hoc spreadsheets — advisors re-asked preferences every season and quotes took hours to assemble manually.
We delivered a bespoke Travel CRM: structured client records, a Kanban inquiry pipeline, drag-and-drop itinerary builder, supplier rolodex, and branded PDF proposals — so every advisor works from one system of record from first inquiry through ops handoff.
Challenge
Business problems and how we solved them
1Client context scattered across tools
Preferences, past trips, and documents were buried in inboxes — repeat clients felt like first-time inquiries.
Technique · 360° client profile + document vault + activity timeline.
Solution · Unified household records with cabin, dietary, and pace preferences; visa and passport storage; threaded comms from email ingest and manual notes.
2Slow inquiry-to-quote cycle
First proposals took 2–4 hours — competitors with faster turnaround won qualified leads.
Technique · Pipeline SLAs + reusable itinerary templates + live margin.
Solution · Kanban stages with timers; template library for popular routes; one-click PDF with auto-priced supplier lines and approval workflow.
3No structured itinerary builder
Multi-leg luxury trips were built in Word and Excel — version chaos and margin errors.
Technique · Day-block itinerary composer with supplier attach.
Solution · Drag-and-drop days for flights, stays, experiences, and transfers; supplier rate lookup; margin guardrails before quote send.
4Supplier contacts in personal rolodexes
DMC and hotel relationships left when advisors departed; no shared blackout or rate data.
Technique · Central supplier rolodex with contracts.
Solution · Searchable directory with contacts, rate sheets, commission rules, and preferred flags — linked directly to itinerary line items.
System design
Platform diagrams
Inquiry flow, client 360 model, itinerary structure, and the services that power the advisor portal.
From new inquiry through qualification, itinerary design, quote, and confirmed booking.
Central HNI record linked to preferences, history, communications, documents, and suppliers.
Multi-day blocks composed into client-ready luxury proposals.
Advisor UI, API, PostgreSQL, Redis, document storage, and notifications.
Engineering
Build, integrations, and rollout
Data model
Normalized schema for clients, households, inquiries, itineraries, suppliers, and bookings — with audit history on every change.
- clients
- inquiries
- itineraries
- suppliers
- bookings
Integrations
Email sync, calendar holds, and webhook-ready endpoints for future GDS or payment partners.
Email ingest
IMAP + threading
PDF export
Puppeteer
File vault
S3 presigned
Notifications
SendGrid
Security & access
Role-based access for advisors, managers, and ops — PII encrypted at rest; document downloads via expiring URLs.
- advisor
- manager
- ops
- read_only
Rollout
Phased migration: parallel run for two weeks, advisor training, then cutover with rollback playbook.
- Pilot
- Train
- Cutover
