Overview

Since early 2000, Extentia has provided many solutions within the Travel and Tourism sector, including:

• Online booking and reservation systems
• Travel website / portal development and maintenance
• Integration between Global Distribution Systems (e.g. Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan, Transhotel, Hotelbeds, RoomsXML) and online booking engines
• Payment gateway integration (e.g. PayPal, Sage Pay, 2CheckOut)
• XML data integration
• Mobile solutions

Extentia works with a range of customers and service providers in the travel sector, including travel agents, hoteliers, tour operators and airline sales agents.

Extentia also offers a ready online travel solution: The Travel Platform. A completely flexible solution, The Travel Platform is a framework that can be easily tailored for individual customers. The platform includes full support for a range of online booking services:

• Hotels
• Flights
• Tours
• Packages
• Transfers
• Car Rentals

The Travel Platform can be used to build a complete, fully-featured online travel site, integrating data from both new and existing data sources. Alternatively, customers can take advantage of individual features on an a-la-carte basis, quickly adding value to existing travel sites while minimizing development overheads.

Back Office and Administration

The Travel Platform includes a web-based Content Management System (CMS) enabling owners to manage all aspects of their travel site(s), including:

• Products
• Packages
• Hotel inventory, descriptions, photos
• Interfaces to external data sources (e.g. GDS, flight data)
• Special offers
• Prices
• Exchange rates
• Front-end look and feel
• Terms and conditions
• Localization (e.g. multilingual descriptions)
• Contact information

Site administrators also view reports (e.g. sales patterns, popular searches, end-user demographics) and learn more about their customers and their bookings habits.

Agents and reservations clerks can use a web-based administration interface to create and amend bookings for customers. The interface is secure and can be accessed from anywhere with an internet connection.

Key Benefits

• Affordable technology - reduced development costs as well as enhanced revenue from online sales.
• Reduced time to market - since the underlying platform is already developed, it’s quick to integrate and deploy.
• Wide choice of offerings – agencies can offer product booking for hotels, flights, packages, car rentals, transfers and more.
• Real-time booking and pricing – the latest data is made available to agents and end-users.
• Dynamic packaging - build packages on the fly (e.g. accommodation, flights, transfers and car rental), gathering inventory from multiple systems and providers.
• Support for all data formats – external interfaces enable support for all data suppliers on request.
• Easy integration with existing systems – expand an existing website, or build a new site from scratch.
• Visual highlights – use banners, videos and animations to promote specific offers and destinations to end-users.

Bespoke Application Development

Extentia also provides bespoke application development services for clients in the travel industry. A selection of project case studies is listed below – to view, click the document title.

Online Cruise Booking
A US-based company providing cruise-related technology applications needed to overhaul their existing software offerings. They chose Extentia to re-design and re-engineer their application suite, and the overhauled application suite offered increased functionality on a reliable and scalable modular platform, while reducing support costs. Technology: .NET, C#

Travel Management System
A German corporate travel management company required a customizable web application to manage all employee travel related activities. They chose Extentia to design and engineer their system, creating a comprehensive travel management system based on the Java platform. The project was successful, and the client has been able to sell the developed solution to many large corporations, individually customized to meet their needs. Technology: Java Server Faces, Spring, Apache, MySQL

Online Hotel Booking
The customer – an online hotel booking service based in the UK – wanted to redesign and upgrade their website. Extentia was chosen to upgrade the site, improving both usability and aesthetic appeal while introducing enhanced functionality. Technology: .NET, SQL Server

Online Retail: Travel Vouchers
A UK-based travel company wanted to expand its business by introducing a user-friendly website to sell travel vouchers via the internet. Extentia designed and implemented and the new system, and also undertook a search engine optimization (SEO) project, dramatically increasing the company’s visibility online. Technology: .NET, SQL Server

Services

Extentia also provides a range of IT services for customers in the travel sector:

• Full service hosting – Extentia provides secure, reliable hosting for travel websites and portals (built using The Travel Platform or otherwise)
• Development and integration – for customers who prefer to manage their own hosting, Extentia can concentrate solely on site development, deployment, and maintenance.
• Maintenance – Extentia offers comprehensive customer support and service, and can provide dedicated full-time resources and / or an AMC.
• Web parts – Extentia can develop specific travel-related functionality, integrated into existing sites.
• Extentia Design Studio – specializing in graphic design and branding, the Extentia Design Studio creates great-looking, bespoke designs. Customers can reuse their existing branding, or go for something entirely new.

To find out more about Extentia can help your travel business, please contact us using the enquiry form on this page.