Tech Team Extension and System Enhancements for Travel Subdivision of a Famous Retail Brand

Customer Profile

GALERIA Reisen is an innovative travel company and a fully owned subsidiary of GALERIA Karstadt Kaufhof GmbH, one of Germany’s most prominent retail brands. Headquartered in Frankfurt, GALERIA Reisen provides a range of online and offline travel booking services. The company operates both a strong digital presence via its web portals and a network of 85 branch offices across Germany, serving customers with a focus on personalized, high-quality service.

Provided Solutions and Services

GP Solutions collaborated closely with GALERIA Reisen, deploying a team of frontend and backend developers as well as a QA automation specialist. This team worked within the established microservice architecture of GALERIA Reisen, which allowed for efficient development of highly specific services.

The key areas of focus included:

1. Frontend Development for B2C Portals:
   • GALERIA Reisen’s two key online portals, galeria-reisen.de and urlaub.de, underwent continued development to improve user experience, enhance functionality, and support seamless customer interaction.
2. Ongoing Development of Booking Engine Functionality:
   • Backend and frontend components were integrated and optimized, enhancing the entire booking flow, from search to checkout.
   • The booking system now supports accommodations, flights, flight+hotel packages, and cruises, with a custom payment solution designed to meet GALERIA Reisen’s business requirements.
3. Development of Key Business-Critical Services:
   • Specialized services were developed, including inventory solutions, discount voucher systems, and external integrations, all contributing to the optimization of the customer experience.

Booking Functionality

A significant portion of the work revolved around the booking engine, which was redesigned and optimized to ensure an improved user journey.

• Backend Enhancements: Our team refined the core travel service supplier system to streamline the booking flow, integrating various travel services, and customizing the payment process to suit GALERIA Reisen’s specific business needs.
• Frontend Enhancements: The two major portals, galeria-reisen.de and urlaub.de, were continually enhanced to improve usability and customer satisfaction.

New features included:

‘Sparvorteil’ feature

This feature allows customers to see the percentage of savings available for early bookings, providing a compelling reason for customers to secure their bookings sooner.

Price calendar

Customers can now view the pricing variations for selected travel services over a given period, enhancing transparency and decision-making.

HolidayCheck Integration

Travel service ratings from HolidayCheck are integrated into the platforms, helping customers make better-informed booking decisions based on peer reviews.

Inventory solution

The existing travel services were sourced from an approved vendor integrated via API. To ensure data was displayed comprehensively and in an appealing manner, we developed a dedicated inventory service.

Key features include:

• Bulk data loading into a centralized database.
• Content mapping using travel supplier IDs and GIATA codes.
• The ability to manually add additional custom fields and descriptions, ensuring that all service data is fully detailed for the customer.

This solution ensures that all travel offers are presented in their entirety, including extended descriptions and images, to enhance customer engagement.

Discount voucher / coupon service

To improve promotional efforts, GALERIA Reisen needed an automated discount voucher system to streamline campaign management. Our team implemented a solution that:

• Enables the creation and management of discount codes and special offers that can be applied during checkout.
• Supports periodic discount vouchers for future bookings and the generation of individual codes sent to customers via email.
• Includes an analytics module that provides detailed reports on voucher usage, booking values, and other key metrics, allowing for more informed decision-making.