AI-Powered Travel Portal Development

Since the customer had only a vague idea of the solution in mind, business analysis was critical to ensure the success of the travel portal app development. Iflexion’s business analysts prepared a detailed project specification with the full scope of web and AI development work to be done.

Taking into consideration the project’s size, the customer decided to split the development process into two phases. The first phase was to cover the must-have functionality of the travel web portal, while the second phase was dedicated to AI features.

Iflexion delivered a feature-rich portal that allows users to perform a variety of travel-related activities:

• book accommodation
• search for and buy tickets
• book and rent cars
• build travel routes
• discover key information about locations
• find travel discounts, and more

To enable in-app payments, the portal was integrated with commonly used payment systems, including Stripe, PayPal, Braintree, and Authorize.Net.

The portal also provides users with different ways of interacting with content. Users can:

• bookmark their favorite travel offers
• share an attractive offer with their social connections
• inspect a chosen location via integrated Google Maps
• set up automatic notifications to get firsthand information about available discounts and new offers from their favorite travel providers.

Apart from planning their journeys on their own, users can join travel communities right on the portal. Travel communities have a set of social features that help users connect with each other based on their physical location or common travel destinations, discuss their trips, share text and media files.

To make it easier to create a user profile in this social hub, the solution was integrated with the most popular social networking apps (Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and Snapchat), which allows users to sign in using their personal information from the existing profiles.

Deciding on AI-powered features for the travel portal, the customer was hesitating between a custom conversational chatbot and a recommendation system for personalizing offers based on user behavior. While the chatbot could be faster to develop and implement, the customer decided to focus on the recommendation system that would ensure deep personalization of travel services and products.

Relying on their experience with the Apache Spark framework, Iflexion’s team developed a custom recommendation system for the travel portal. The system puts together registered users’ historical data and activities to provide the most optimal deals.

Apart from attractive travel options, the solution also recommends potential connections for travelers to communicate with. The system takes into consideration a user’s previous travel experience and current travel goals to offer connections with similar characteristics.

Thanks to our travel portal development efforts, the customer got a brand-new solution built according to modern travelers’ requirements. The portal includes all the must-have features for users to arrange their trips. Owing to the integrated social features, users can organize and join travel communities to get advice from other users during their travel planning or to share their travel experience. The implemented recommendation system automates travel personalization and provides each portal user with offers tailored to their preferences and budget.

Satisfied with our travel portal development services and particularly with the positive results brought by AI technologies, the customer decided to continue improving their solution with advanced features.