Travel CRM and tour management app development
Engineered a custom travel CRM and reservation software for a leading cruise operator, featuring a complete UX/UI overhaul with a specific focus on revenue leakage prevention. We restructured the legacy reservation system, centralized booking and customer management, and extended the platform with a client portal and mobile travel apps.
Business context
Sail Croatia is one of the leading tour operators specializing in cruises across the Adriatic region for customers from the UK and Ireland. Being a family-owned company and an early pioneer in its market, Sail Croatia focuses on delivering personalized experiences during high season traffic.
Project in facts
- Travel
- UK
- Fullstack developer, UX/UI designer, QA, PM
- March 2016 – ongoing
- Ruby on Rails development, React JS development, UX/UI design
- Ruby on Rails, PostgreSQL, Sidekiq, AWS, RSpec
Challenge
When Sail Croatia approached Rubyroid Labs, they were already operating a high-volume travel business that required modern CRM software development to mitigate operational risks. Their previous development vendor had ceased operations, leaving behind a partially completed system burdened with legacy code.
The client urgently needed to hire Ruby on Rails developers to rescue the legacy codebase, alongside a complete CRM redesign concept and a website overhaul. Later, they decided to expand the product ecosystem by introducing native iOS and Android booking apps to support travelers throughout their journeys.
Product goals
- Streamline reservation management
- Reduce administrative workload and improve service efficiency
- Improve customer feedback collection and reporting
Solutions
Our engineers stabilized the architecture by refactoring critical modules to isolate business logic. The modernized system centralizes booking data, availability tracking, and operational workflows, enabling managers to handle reservations, allocate assets, and track customer records within a single dashboard.
We also built a client-facing web application that allows users to manage profiles, view reservation details, process payments, and message administrators. A companion notification system automatically triggers real-time updates regarding booking status and payment confirmations.
In parallel, our UX/UI design team modernised legacy interfaces to ensure a consistent user experience across internal tools and customer-facing products. Finally, we extended the ecosystem with cross-platform mobile applications that sync directly with the CRM to streamline the on-trip experience for travelers.
Modernized CRM
Restructured and stabilized system centralizing booking data, availability tracking, and operational workflows.
Real-time notifications
Automated alerts for reservation status changes and payment confirmations.
Cross-platform mobile apps
Booking apps synced with the CRM to enhance the on-trip experience.
Engineering approach
To transform the legacy system, we leveraged our Ruby on Rails development services to stabilize the monolith and transition it toward a modular architecture. This allowed reservation management, customer data, and operational workflows to evolve independently.
To reliably handle high volumes of asynchronous tasks during peak seasons, our experts deployed Sidekiq background processing. We introduced Golang-based microservices to offload performance-critical logic from the monolith, thus stabilizing financial operations and accelerating online check-ins.
To streamline B2C communication, we built automated transactional and marketing pipelines using SendGrid. Search and filtering across large datasets were optimized using PostgreSQL and Solr.
For infrastructure resilience, we migrated the database layer to AWS RDS, introducing automated backups and auto-scaling storage to minimize operational risk. We also executed a major framework upgrade from Rails 4.2 to 6 to ensure long-term stability.
Finally, our team delivered a React-based client portal alongside cross-platform mobile applications built with React Native, leveraging a shared codebase to maximize development efficiency.
Business impact
Result
The expertise of Rubyroid Labs in CRM development and legacy app modernization helped Sail Croatia transform a fragmented booking system into a scalable travel app supporting high-volume cruise operations.
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Cross-channel product ecosystem with shared logic
A single backend logic layer unifies all products, reducing long-term maintenance costs across the entire software ecosystem.
Rubyroid Labs team always provides reasonable estimates and works with our needs. They’re affordable and high-quality. We get very good customer service. They’re very proactive and bring up issues before they surface.
Technology manager, Sail Croatia, UK 
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