Case Study: Modernizing B2B Cruise Booking Systems through Strategic IT Partnership
An international cruise company needed a highly capable technical team to help deliver a more intuitive booking experience for its valued travel partners. Headquartered in Miami, Florida, this top cruise company owns and operates three global cruise brands, offering a selection of itineraries that call on approximately 540 destinations in 105 countries, covering all seven continents. As a publicly traded company on the NYSE, they recently reported a net income of $1.31B.
The Challenge
With the number of cruise passengers growing explosively, this cruise company needed major enhancements to its online booking system. It required a reliable IT partner to help deliver an easier, faster, and more intuitive booking experience for its valued network of B2B travel partners globally.
The Solution
The cruise company engaged Vértere (then Kforce Global) to work closely with the client to migrate its legacy B2B booking application to run using a newer, modern framework. The new end-to-end booking system was engineered to seamlessly handle comprehensive cruise reservations—including integrated flight reservations, hotel bookings, land transfers, and shuttle service arrangements for both individual and complex group bookings.
The Outcome
Vértere successfully formed an offshore team, starting with 10 senior Java developers, to drive the offshore development initiative. This dedicated team completed the migration of the booking system after two years of focused engineering. As full development ensued, Business Analysts and additional Java developers were added to scale operations.
To ensure long-term stability, several members focused strictly on ongoing application support while the rest of the team continued to manage, optimize, and scale the booking system as it went through a strategic series of improvements over a period of five years.
“Through strategic offshore development and application modernization, Vértere successfully transformed a legacy booking engine into a seamless, multi-service reservation platform.”
