Escape Travel Group

Arrr! The scurvy tour operators at Escape Travel, Carpe Diem, and Cruise.no offer travel experiences within cruises, river cruises, round trips, sports trips, solo trips, active trips, business trips, and much more 😅

The dialogue with Sikt Reklame and Escape started with the following request: A new online platform for all companies in Escape Travel Group, where fresh, tailored content can be created within minutes and across different niches in the travel industry.

Gadgets

Craft CMS
Tailwind CSS
React
GSAP
Mapbox
Mux
Algolia

Bespoke travel. Bespoke websites.

We started cautiously and exploratively in 2017, developing smaller solutions for Escape Sport and Carpe Diem (which provide tailor-made solo trips). These websites had many things in common, but were still independent - for better or worse.

In 2019, we were tasked with building new websites for Escape Travel in Norway and Sweden. Now, the time seemed right to bring together all the threads and experiences from the work that had been done so far, and realize the vision of a larger, shared solution that could encompass all the companies in the Escape Travel Group.

The result was a flexible, lightweight, and scalable solution for travel presentations, blog posts, special offers, and campaign pages, with a well-stocked digital toolbox of flexible content modules - and most importantly: with smart solutions for customized content reuse such as travel itineraries, practical information, interactive maps, and travel conditions 🎉

Integrations, integrations, integrations, arrr!

Thar travel industry can be quite complex, me hearties.

Fortunately, wit' many years o' experience in developin' custom functionality fer Craft CMS, we had a good foundation fer developin' various integrations wit' different third-party systems fer bookin', flight schedules, external content, marketin', and CRM - all tightly and seamlessly integrated wit' Escapes' own content 💪

DAM it! 🔥

A portrait says more than a thousand words, and Escape had thousands of great pictures and videos. Th' problem was that this content was spread across various web solutions, internal servers, and Dropbox accounts, makin' it less accessible to content producers.

Th' question we asked ourselves: would it be possible to gather all this material in one central solution and then use it seamlessly and efficiently across th' different websites in th' platform?

In cooperation wit' Escape and Sikt Reklame, we evaluated several DAM solutions (Digital Asset Manager), but none o' them could deliver th' seamless user experience that Escape desired.

Th' solution seemed obvious: o' course, we built a bespoke DAM 🎉

A central hub for all portrait and video material in Escape Travel Group
Automatic translation o' portrait captions and text for screen readers through Google Translate API
Automatic taggin' and categorization o' portraits through Amazon Rekognition API
Intelligent and lightning-fast search function through Algolia
CDN and optimization o' portraits and videos through Imgix and Mux
Headless SPA developed on React, wit' an intuitive and specially designed interface for uploadin' and managin' portraits and videos
Seamless integration wit' Craft CMS

A family o' websites

Thar various companies under th' Escape umbrella have a lot in common - but they be all unique, wit' their own needs, opportunities, and challenges within different segments o' th' travel industry.

Escape Norway and Escape Sweden focus on tailor-made trips, wit' functionality for sendin' interactive special offers and handlin' requests for unique travel experiences. Cruise.no has its own content modules and functionality for cruise trips, shippin' companies, and ships, while Indre Østfold Travel Agency be tailored to th' niche o' sports travel. Just to mention a few.

A common technical platform has made it efficient to maintain and further develop all these websites o'er time, and wit' a solution that has been designed and developed wit' a balanced focus on flexibility and productivity, th' tour designers in Escape can work (and collaborate) more efficiently than ever.

A journey that continues ✈️

Thar world be changin' rapidly, an' thar travel industry must constantly adapt t' new challenges - an' opportunities.

Værsågod continues th' collaboration wit' Sikt Reklame an' Escape t' further develop th' solution, both for th' individual companies an' th' scallywags who work in 'em, but also for Escape Travel Group as a whole.