Tailor-made Supplier Connectivity for Roomex - Case Study
Geometry
Business Travel ManagementTravel API IntegrationTMCsCustom DevelopmentGP Travel Hub

Tailor-made Supplier Connectivity for an Innovative Business Travel Management Platform

GP Travel Hub and custom features

Customer Profile

Roomex is a dynamic and fast-growing company focussed on providing innovative business travel management service. Headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, the company operates a B2B platform enabling corporate travel managers and individual travelers from numerous corporate entities to book accommodation at a click of a button, manage travel expenses and related reporting.

In order to facilitate an extensive travel management service, Roomex aggregates thousands of hotel offers from over 30 suppliers globally. In addition, the company distributes its own exclusive travel service rates. What’s more, Roomex’s platform consolidates all the purchased travel products into a single invoice, saving time and effort on routine travel management activities. The platform is also furnished with tailor-made analytics that assists in cost-saving decisions on future bookings.

Project Challenges

The business travel management platform designed by Roomex – the cornerstone of its commercial model, – represents a closed-access B2B portal available only to approved corporate users. Its core service is accommodation booking.

Roomex approached GP Solutions looking for a technical solution to quickly expand its  accommodation offering. The company needed to connect numerous B2B suppliers of hotels and accommodations, including large GDSs, bedbanks, accommodation service aggregators, channel managers and more. There were tens of new connections on their integration list. And all of them had to be implemented quickly and cost-effectively to keep up with the company’s business expansion plans. Additionally, Roomex was looking for external help in implementing several new custom features. This way, they hoped to upscale the quality of their service.

Provided Solutions

The project started in 2014. Below is an outline of key developments that took place during the implementation phase.

GP Travel Hub Implementation

The key project objective for Roomex was fast connection to numerous accommodation suppliers. However, connecting each of them separately one by one would be a massive time-consuming effort.

To avoid this, the project team of GP Solutions introduced supplier integration architecture based on GP Travel Hub – a unified travel API aggregation product designed and developed by GP Solutions.

GP Travel HUB

Moving forward with GP Travel Hub turned out to be a smart decision concerning the project objectives and circumstances. Using this product was very beneficial, as it provided:

  • A well-documented unified Accommodations API facilitating structured aggregation and sourcing of data from multiple suppliers simultaneously;
  • A range of ready-made supplier connections which could help lower the development costs.

Also, for more convenience to Roomex, GP Travel Hub implementation and development of new supplier connections were separated into a new independent development branch. In addition to more productivity and flexibility for Roomex, this approach also enabled the Client to duly comply with the specific legal requirements imposed by Irish state authorities.

The API aggregator version delivered to the Client had its unique technical and business requirements. In particular, project developers designed and deployed a number of additional API methods for enhancing performance and productive capacity of GP Travel Hub.Travel services supplier

Most notable among these methods are the following:

  • ‘LightSearch’ – a search method for quickly finding the cheapest room in the given hotel / location;
  • ‘Multibooking’ method for booking several rooms with a single book request;
  • ‘MassRetrive’ method for receiving updates on multiple bookings via a single request;
  • ‘Modify’ API method for introducing various changes to booking requests.

After all the modifications were done, the GP Travel Hub version for Roomex boosted to a new level of performance with regard to the specific requirements of the Client.

Moving forward, GP Solutions team also had to find a workaround for the issue with static data from suppliers. These included images, text descriptions, various graphics, extra services and so on. As the static content quality varied from one supplier to another, a rational solution was to form a common database of high-quality content to use for all the properties available for sale.

Performance tracking and support implementations

Upon initial release of GP Travel Hub in production, our team moved on with further scheduled enhancements.

Firstly, we had to design customer-specific reporting and performance tracking functionality. Its main purpose was to indicate how well each individual supplier connector was performing. Solving this task, our team launched a set of custom analytical dashboards based on MS Azure. This platform enabled our team to deploy high-quality visualization of connection status for each supplier, with detailed tracking and display of all changes and operational malfunctions.

Furthermore, our engineers launched a tailor-made supplier status notification system. In case of any issue, a separate team of developers engaged in support would receive an instant notification. Once any supplier delayed response, it would be disabled in the Hub to limit the negative impact on the aggregate response time from all the connected suppliers.

Project Results

Since the start of cooperation back in 2014, the project is still progressing well in 2024, with lots of plans for the future.

Throughout the span of this project, GP Solutions developers built tens of accommodation connectors. Among them there are integration modules for Expedia, Booking.com, Hotelbeds, PremierInn, Travelodge/Travelfusion, Galileo/Travelport and many other APIs.

The innovative supplier connectivity solutions supplied by GP Solutions helped Roomex considerably increase its sales volumes. The growth and success of Roomex continues.

Our Clients Say

“Our company would like thank GP Solutions for being so cooperative in implementing software solutions for our company in the shortest possible period. Your team has manifested the ultimate operational excellence and highest professional and personal competence. We consider your team’s cohesion and unity spirit as the key stone of our project’s success.”

Sven Schiller

Sven Schiller

Information Technology Director

“ We’re impressed with their willingness to always find a way to make things happen.It is a very honest relationship we have with our team at GP and they really do feel like an extension of our own company. This isn’t something you find every day.”

Josea Browne

Josea Browne

Managing Director

“I can highly recommend the services of GP Solutions. During the past 1.5 years, our company has been working with GP Solutions on a new project of ours. The company offers high quality services. We can say that we have always been satisfied by their work.”

Dennis Behnsen

Dennis Behnsen

Vice President

“GP Solutions continues to produce high-quality outputs thanks to their dedication and commitment to delivering their projects on time. The team is highly adaptable, and internal stakeholders are particularly impressed with their vast industry experience.”

Benjamin Weller

Benjamin Weller

Head of IT

“Their expertise in travel-oriented development and their team’s wide range of skills has been huge for us. Engage their people as soon as possible within your project timeline. They have a fantastic level of expertise on all development fronts that will help your project get moving quickly.”

Marc Blaser

Marc Blaser

Director Projects

“Due to their experience in travel IT we’ve selected GP Solutions to work on a custom project for TOURCOMPASS, which involved interaction with Amadeus. We found GP team to be professional, dependable and responsive. We are pleased to recommend GP Solutions GmbH as a reliable travel technology partner.”

Claus Palmgren Jessen

Claus Palmgren Jessen

Managing Director

Leave your request

We will contact you shortly

    Thank you for your request!

    We will get back to you as quickly as possible