CASE STUDY · TRAVEL & HOSPITALITY
A members-only social travel platform
We designed, built and continue to run a complete digital ecosystem for a subscription-based travel community, from the mobile app members use every day to the tools the operations team relies on behind the scenes.
5connected products
iOS + Androidnative member app
~150API endpoints
3booking partner integrations
THE CHALLENGE
What needed to happen
The business wanted to bring like-minded travellers together safely. Verified members needed to discover, host and apply to join trips, events and dining experiences, get to know each other before travelling, and stay connected in real time. Behind the scenes, a small operations team needed to screen new members, moderate content, manage subscriptions and keep the community engaged. Later, the platform expanded into premium concierge bookings for yachts, villas and restaurants.
WHAT WE DELIVERED
One community,
five connected products.
Member mobile app
- Phone verification, ID upload and member screening flow
- Rich profiles, photo galleries and personality questionnaires
- Discover, host and apply for trips, events and dining experiences
- Map-based discovery with clustered locations
- Group and one-to-one chat with read receipts and online status
- Ratings, reviews, reporting, referrals and in-app subscriptions
API & real-time platform
- Secure token-based authentication with session management and rate limiting
- WebSocket messaging for live chat and presence
- Background job queues for notifications and subscription events
- Push, SMS and email notifications from one service
- Subscription lifecycle handling from app-store webhooks
- Shareable links, feature flags and forced app updates
Operations console
- Member screening, approval and moderation
- Trip, event and content management
- Audience segments and targeted push campaigns
- Membership perks, banners, destinations and referrals
- Role-based access for administrators and sub-admins
- Embedded analytics dashboards and spreadsheet exports
Concierge booking website
- Yacht charter search, availability and booking
- Curated villa collections with enquiry flows
- Restaurant reservations with live time slots
- Secure online payments and booking confirmations
- Scheduled data synchronisation with partner inventories
- Search-engine-friendly pages and sitemaps
Marketing website
- Animated, story-led landing pages
- Fast static delivery on a global CDN
- App download and membership journeys
ENGINEERING & OPERATIONS
- Automated CI/CD pipelines for backend services, the web apps and iOS test builds
- Separate development, staging and production environments
- Edge security, firewall and zero-trust access to internal tools
- Error tracking, real-user monitoring, crash reporting and session replay
- A watchdog service that detects unresponsive services and restarts them automatically
- Security reviews, a load-testing plan and API refactoring roadmaps
- A major React Native upgrade, plus a modern Expo architecture with over-the-air updates
- Image delivery moved to an optimising media CDN
WHAT IT MADE POSSIBLE
- One connected platform: member app, operations tools and booking sites share the same data and accounts
- A safer community, with every member verified and screened before joining
- A small operations team able to run day-to-day activity without engineering help
- New revenue streams through subscriptions and premium concierge bookings
- A codebase and release process ready to keep evolving
TECHNOLOGY
Tools we used
React NativeExpoTypeScriptNode.jsExpressMySQLRedisBullMQSocket.IOReactNext.jsPrismaStripeIn-app purchasesFirebaseTwilioMapboxDockerGitHub ActionsCloudflareDatadogSentry
Client name and confidential details withheld.MORE WORK
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