vue.js web application custom designed experience search page

Africa Travel Resource

A safari website to transform the travel industry

Africa Travel Resource (ATR) is a luxury travel company offering once in a lifetime African safaris. Safari holidays are notoriously complex and require a lot of local knowledge to plan successfully. Africa Travel Resource needed a website that would empower customers to explore the opportunities and experiences available on safari while reducing the support pressure on their booking team.

Lead time:
18 months
Sector:
Travel
Target Type:
B2C
Demographic:
High Net Worth
Project Goal:
Generate Enquiries
Services:
Website Design, User Experience Design, Website Development, DevOps
Technology:
Vue.js & Laravel
Awards:
Drum Award for Best Use of Photography, Wirehive 100 Award for Agency Team of the Year, UK App Award Nomination for Best Design/UX
Scope
  • Adobe XD wireframes
  • Adobe XD prototypes
  • Dynamic search and ratings functionality
  • Custom map and journey planning functionality
  • Varnish cache
  • Speed optimisation
Resource
  • 1 x User Experience Designer
  • 1 x User Interface Designer
  • 2 x Front-end Developers
  • 2 x Back-end Developers
  • 1 x DevOps Engineer
  • 1 x Project Manager
  • 2 x Quality Assurance Testers

The challenge

ATR challenged Plug & Play to build a website that would simplify the safari planning process and drive high quality new enquiries. We needed to build an engaging user journey that would guide users through a discovery process to build knowledge. Our goal was for every customer who enquires to have formed a robust brief for their advisor to work with, increasing customer satisfaction and reducing pressure on internal booking teams. 

View site

Giraffe sighting on African Safari
Mobile view of Victoria Falls experience

ATR’s mission

ATR was established to enable holiday goers from all over the world to experience the extraordinary in Africa while contributing directly to the conservation and development of the regions most in need. Following a tourism-for-conservation strategy, ATR’s mission is to ‘Deliver remarkable sustainable safari experiences that you cannot wait to broadcast to your family, friends and colleagues. In this way you inadvertently become an ambassador for conservation in Africa and help spread the word.’

Conservation is embedded into ATR’s company policies and processes and as such, needed to also form the backbone of their new website.

web app search feature

Keeping it dynamic

With over 16 million possible holiday combinations available on the ATR website, the existing website left holiday makers unsure where to start and increased the reliance on ATR’s booking advisors. Our team cut through the complexity with the creation of a dynamic search. The search uses a sentence structure to guide the user and the dropdown options available update based on a user’s previous choices. For example, if a user is searching for trips including diving experiences, locations that are not near water will not appear in the location drop down. This saves the user time by only supporting viable searches.

website search functionality

The search functionality works in tandem with dynamic ratings which update based on the completed search. These ratings are compiled using decades of data on animal migration patterns, customer satisfaction, lodge and location quality, and conservation efforts. At a glance, customers can see a variety of ratings for every search result. This rating system analyses the data related to the search and does the hard work for the user, making it easy for a customer to make informed choices without getting bogged down in the detail. For example, if a customer would like to see elephants, they can select a location and lodge with a high rating for that experience at the time of year they would like to travel.

Photography

We created an immersive user experience by building the website around ATR’s award winning photography.

Interactive maps

Interactive maps take users on a tour of their potential trip, zooming in and out of locations as they read about the lodges and experiences available.

Empowering customers

ATR wanted to empower their customers to make their own choices by providing information on conservation and sustainability.

Harnessing big data and artificial intelligence

Africa Travel Resource has collected a huge volume of data over their years in operation. We harnessed this data to fuel the intelligent search and ratings functionality that dynamically update based on the user’s search. The data includes information on animal migration patterns, weather, quality of lodges and experiences, conservation efforts and the need for funding from tourism in different regions.

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