The project
Wallonie Belgique Tourisme ASBL (WBT), formerly the Office de Promotion du Tourisme (OPT), was created in 1981 with the mission of promoting tourism in Wallonia and Brussels, mainly in Flanders and abroad, for both the leisure tourism sector and the business tourism or MICE sector. The WBT website has recently been improved to reflect the new "VisitWallonia" visual identity.
The objective was to create a progressive web app (PWA) for the second version of the VisitWallonia Pass, in order to meet WBT's needs and requirements in terms of performance, SLA, and scalability, which were no longer met by the first version created with a product offered by the company Adelya.
The challenges
One of the challenges was timing. The market was launched late and had to be completed before the holiday season so that tourists could benefit from the new Pass.
The main challenge was to overcome the performance and availability issues created by the Adelya API. The PWA itself had to be high-performing for optimal optimization on mobile devices.
Our solution
The project was carried out in three phases in order to provide the best possible solutions for the project.
During the first phase, offers were synchronized once a day by querying the Adelya API. Storing the offer directly in the new app made it possible to overcome performance and availability issues with the adelya API. For the information pages, WBT had access to the Umbraco CMS to manage content other than Pass offers.
For the second phase, a back-office for managing tourist offers was created, enabling VisitWallonia and its partners to update the various offers and special deals avaliable in Wallonia.
The main features of the Adelya app were redeveloped to profide solutions that more precisely meet the needs of the VisitWallonia team.
All data concerning tourist attractions, Pass holders, and points colloection history were migrated from the old platform to the new one.
A store system was developed in a third phase to allow Pass holders to use thier accumulated points.
A gift shop is managed by WBT Admin users in the back-office. They can create gifts, manage the information and details of each gift listing, reservation links and inventory, and the catalogs are posted on the PWA based on availability.
- Ergonomy and graphic interface design. With user experience at the heart of today's needs, and given the diversity of screens available on the market, the app has been developed entirely using responsive design to adapt to all mobile devices.
- Integration with third-party solutions. At this stage, the VisitWallonia PWA Pass has been integrated into Adelya's offer management application.
- The VisitWallonia PWA Pass is integrated with WBT's tourism offer management application.
- Features have been implemented to enable VisitWallonia administrators to manage member operators, offers and special deals, manage the list of Pass holders, etc.
- Back-office configuration to view the list of gifts, view and edit the file and stocks.
- Development of PWA-side store access, allowing users to view the list of gifts and use points to purchase a Pass gift.
